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Elements  of  Unity  in  the 
Homeric  Poems 

BY 

EDWARD  FARQUHAR,  Ph.D. 


Presented   before  the  Columbian  University  as  Thesis  for  the  Degree  of 
Doctor  of  Philosophy 


Reprinted  from  The  Conservative  Review  of  June  and  September,  1900 


THE  NEALE  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

431  Eleventh  Street,  N.  W. 
Washington,  D.  C. 


,    *    *  •  M 


■    '  % 


ELEMENTS  OF  UNITY  IN  THE  HOMERIC  POEMS 

By  Edward  Farquhar,  Ph.D. 

Professor  of  History  in  the  Corcoran  Scientific  School,  Columbian  University 
PART   I. 

The  reader  who  is  more  impressed  with  the  sense  of  unity 
than  of  diversity  in  the  composition  of  the  Iliad,  suffers 
a  peculiar  difficulty  in  debate  with  an  opponent.  It  is  not 
precisely  that  he  is  liable  to  the  reproach  of  being  a  "poet" 
instead  of  a  "professor,"  with  consequent  derogation  from  his 
standing  as  a  judge  in  poetic  matters;  or  a  mere  conservative 
unready  for  new  truth :  every  student  of  Homer  living  has 
begun  his  study  long  since  the  Lay  theory  was  familiar,  inso- 
much that  a  reviewer  lately  appointed  the  centennial  of 
Wolf's  publication,  1895,  as  the  date  after  which  no  writer  of 
credit  would  contend  for  the  unity;  no  unreasonable  prog- 
nostic, if  the  other  theory  be  essentially  reasonable.  The 
difficulty  is  rather,  that  certain  conditions  of  the  question 
throw  such  a  reader's  ideas  and  expressions  into  forms  which 
by  a  sort  of  optical  illusion  seem  to  resemble  those  of  con- 
tempt. What  could  be  more  repugnant  to  the  proper  feel- 
ing of  one  true  scholar  discussing  with  another?  Yet  the 
unpleasant  result  is  often  quite  apparent.  The  grounds  of 
the  illusion  seem  to  be  of  this  kind:  Contempt  is  the  atti- 
tude of  a  mind  which  feels  its  position  to  be  larger,  broader, 
higher,  as  regarding  one  that  appears  to-  be  smaller,  nar- 
rower, lower.  The  contemplation  of  a  great  object  as  a 
whole,  with  connection  of  parts  in  the  form  of  unity,  natu- 
rally fills  the  mind  with  impressions  as  of  something  ampler 
and  more  elevated  than  contemplation  of  the  parts  in  frac- 
tion, without  such  unity.  To  the  person  occupying  the  for- 
mer point  of  view,  one  occupying  the  latter  must  inevitably 


251772 


j  BfipentSfpf4 Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

seem  to  be  thinking  on  a  smaller  scale,  and  ignoring  the 
greater  realities  of  the  case  in  favor  of  the  less.  Things 
equal  to  the  same  thing  being  equal  to  each  other,  the  ex- 
pression given  to  such  distinctions  on  the  part  of  the  union- 
ist must,  however  involuntarily,  assume  a  guise  as  of  scorn; 
while  a  corresponding  sentiment  of  derision  will  naturally 
arise  on  the  other  part,  in  view  of  an  imaginary  unity  and 
sublimity  construed  against  the  facts;  a  proper  attitude  of 
mind  if  according  to  the  evidence;  very  much  as  the  claims 
of  religion  must  be  regarded  by  agnosticism.  Which  party 
has  the  facts  at  better  command,  and  the  more  controlling 
ones,  is  the  question.  It  gains  nothing,  except  for  the  inter- 
ests of  contention,  to  call  appreciations  of  the  larger  reali- 
ties "instinct."  so  to  discredit  them  as  something  unreason- 
ing and  blindly  emotional.  We  have  only  to  do  with  actual 
perception  of  actual  things.  The  amount  of  arbitrary  "in- 
stinct" has  not  perhaps  been  rated,  as  between  the  unionists 
and  separationists.  The  former  need  hardly  fear  the  bal- 
ance. It  is  a  particular  triumph  of  the  latest  notable  Eng- 
lish work  on  the  subject,  Mr.  Lang's  "Homer  and  the  Epic," 
that  it  so  successfully  overcomes  this  natural  disposition; 
and  they  of  the  other  side  may  well  adapt  the  wondering 
expression  of  a  controversialist  some  ages  since,  that  his  ad- 
versary had  "answered  him  more  as  a  gentleman  than  as  a 
theologian." 

A  tendency  of  criticism  has  developed  within  the  past  cen- 
tury, quite  befitting  the  era  ushered  in  by  Critical  Philoso- 
phy and  French  Revolution,  under  which  everything  must 
be  re-examined,  and  new  basis  found,  or  true  basis  cleared, 
for  any  faith  that  may  remain.  One  direction  of  this  ten- 
dency is  to  assume  the  tradition  of  the  world  as  presumptive 
rather  against  than  in  favor  of  anything  received,  and  so  to 
question  any  great  authorship  wherever  possible;  then  to 
seek  throughout  the  works  for  evidences  of  discrepancy, 
which  in  proportion  to  the  greatness  of  the  work,  that  is  its 
compass  and  richness,  are  sure  to  be  found.  It  should  be 
hastily  protested  that  there  is  no  intention  of  comparing  the 
leading  disintegrationists  of  the  Iliad,  personally,  with  such 


lilcmciits  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems  5 

writers  as  some  of  those,  for  instance,  who  have  lately  had 
their  hours  of  notoriety  in  connection  with  Shakespeare. 
They  appear  to  he  genuine  scholars,  widely  acquainted  with 
their  subject  and  collateral  ones,  and  as  far  as  possible  from 
the  type  of  quack  or  ignoramus.  But  the  peculiar  feature  is 
the  compulsory  reminder  of  the  others'  methods  by  theirs. 
In  each  case,  there  is  first  the  assumption  that  the  accredited 
author  did  not  write  the  works,  and  thereupon  a  vast  con- 
struction of  probabilities  supposing  he  did  not,  with  none 
supposing  that  he  did.  In  each  there  is  ''fabulous  diligence," 
exhaustive  scrutiny  of  separate  passages  and  particulars,  with 
want  of  eye  for  larger  facts  and  relations;  in  each  a  lack  of 
apparent  understanding  what  poetry  is  for.  There  is  labo- 
rious reconstruction  of  past  epochs  as  they  are  different  and 
opposite  from  conditions  of  humanity  ordinarily  known,  not 
as  they  resemble  and  partake  of  them :  yet  withal  a  curious 
insensibility  to  actual  phases  of  human  condition  in  other 
times.  In  the  application  of  such  methods,  it  is  obvious,  as 
just  remarked,  that  the  greater  the  work  the  easier  will  be 
the  task.  The  fuller  the  genius,  the  more  boundless  the 
variety  of  production,  the  more  incomparable  and  trans- 
cendent the  creative  faculty,  hence  the  higher  and  more  sov- 
ereign the  individuality,  the  more  readily  must  that  produc- 
tion lend  itself  to  such  dismemberment,  and  the  more  certain 
will  the  process  be  to  run  its  course,  once  the  favorable  time 
come  on.  What  that  course  is  likely  to*  be  in  our  present 
case,  we  may  see  conclusively  summed  up  in  Goethe,  chief 
epitome  of  these  ages.  He  yields  to-  the  tide  awhile,  then 
rights  himself  once  for  all  above  it,  scorning  nothing,  reject- 
ing no  contribution,  only  weighing  and  perceiving. 

If  genius  of  this  superlative  character  bears  any  relation  to 
its  fulness  of  times,  there  could  be  no  occasion  in  the  history 
of  man,  where  it  would  be  more  entitled  to  appear  than  in 
the  forming  age  of  Greece.  The  achievement  of  the  world 
thus  far,  the  incomparable  race  and  the  epoch  of  that  race, 
afford  a  setting  for  such  a  genius,  marvelously  analogous  to 
the  era  as  to  the  character  of  Shakespeare.  In  largest  and 
profoundest  relations,  this  is  probably  the  greatest  analogy 


6  Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

in  literature.  On  a  sufficient  acquaintance,  the  very  name  of 
Shakespeare  seems  to  carry  with  it  solution  of  nearly  all  the 
problems  as  to  unity  of  the  Iliad,  and  all  as  to  that  of  Iliad 
and  Odyssey.  All  such  instances  as  may  follow  will  be  merely 
specimens.  It  may  be  very  probable  that  the  language  had 
been  essentially  the  same  longer,  and  the  amount  of  litera- 
ture in  his  own  kind  larger,  with  the  Greek  than  the  Eng- 
lishman; but  some  other  outlooks  would  not  have  been  so 
broad.  This  analogy  may  curiously  extend  into  the  most 
important  accessories  of  literature :  Homer  lived  at  a  time 
when  writing  was  in  some  degree  of  use,  yet  his  work  im- 
plies no  relation  with  that  art;  Shakespeare  at  a  time  when 
printing  was  in  use,  yet  his  work — as  dramatist,  the  subject 
of  the  analogy — bears  no  relation  with  that  art,  unless  to 
avoid  it.  A  book  is  lately  out  in  England1  treating  of 
Shakespeare  as  the  Homer  of  that  land,  in  which  the  Plays 
are  divided  up  very  much  as  the  Lays  have  been.  This  is  a 
work  which,  not  having  seen,  1  rejoiced  in,  and  wondered  if 
its  scope  had  been  rightly  apprehended.  If  it  were  simply  a 
parody  of  methods  applied  to  Homer,  it  might  command  a 
success  which  otherwise  it  need  not  hope.  It  is  no*  easy  to 
see  what  of  force  there  is  in  the  one  treatment  which  will  not 
fairly  transfer  itself  to  the  other. 

What  is  the  nature  of  that  individual  genius,  which,  per- 
ceived throughout  the  Iliad,  bears  so  irresistibly  on  the 
reader's  mind  the  impression  of  its  unity?  since  if  no  per- 
sonal Homer  was  ever  known,  we  have  then  the  most  over- 
whelming attestation  to  that  effect  of  unity,  in  the  fact  that 
from  unknown  antiquity  one  was  always  assumed."  As  with 
other  highest  or  deepest  things,  it  is  much  easier  to  describe 
by  attributes  than  in  essence.  "Fire"  may  be  the  favorite 
characteristic  assigned  to  the  Iliad;  but  to  isolate  that  attri- 
bute as  if  it  contained  or  indicated  all,  is  indeed  to  "speak 


1  White's  "Our  English"Homer,"  i8g;>. 

-To  meet  this  primeval  testimony,  a  curious  evidence  of  the  effect  in  question  comes 
forthwith  in  the  past  year.  In  Marchant's  "Greek  Anthology,"  there  are  extracts  irom  the 
various  poets,  among  the  rest  from  all  the  extant  Dramatists,  whose  works  assuredly  were 
conscious  unities;  but  none  from  Homer:  on  the  ground  that  it  is  "idle  to  attempt  to  exhibit 
the  great  epics  in  selections."  If  Lachmannism  or  any  form  of  lay  theory  were  even 
approximately  true,  what  a  model  opportunity  for  disengaging  the  true  unit. 


Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems  7 

as  boys."  The  dactyl-burst  and  spondee-march  so  like 
throughout  this  poem,  so  unlike  anything  else  in  literature 
except  its  softened  echo  in  the  Odyssey,  has  this  element 
forever  at  hand,  as  the  prophet  has  that  of  heaven;  but  it  is 
only  one  of  the  modes.  Arnold's  "grand  style,"  or  "noble- 
ness of  manner,"  is  correct  and  definite,  but  it  only  describes 
an  effect  rather  than  expresses  a  personality;  and  this  defi- 
ciency, masked  under  the  grace  of  that  master's  style,  ex- 
poses us  to  such  a  stroke  of  reasoning  as  that  in  the  Athe- 
naeum's review  of  "Homer  and  the  Epic" :  several  grand- 
style  poets  were  known  to>  be  writing  at  the  same  time,  whom 
nobody  could  confound,  therefore  the  Iliad,  which  nobody 
could  separate  except  with  scissors,  was  written  by  several.1 

Neither  fire  nor  grandeur  is  Homer,  only  in  him;  though 
it  may  be  said  that  grandeur  being  only  in  him,  so  much  the 
grander  he,  as  extending  so  far  and  wide  beyond  it.  That 
the  pathos  of  the  Iliad  should  so  wonderfully  supplement 
its  fire,  is  remarked  in  the  book  just  mentioned:  that  the 
one  is  a  necessary  supplement  to  the  other  in  the  psychol- 
ogy of  highest  dramatic  genius,  appears  to  be  only  sug- 
gested  there.      They  are   action   and   reaction,   in   such   a 

mind. Many   a  vivid   talker  will   bring   exciting   events 

before  the  hearer's  fancy  with  a  graphic  effect  not  far  unlike 
that  of  Homer.  Many  a  bright  damsel,  With  living  phrase 
and  enchanting  mimicry,  can  personate  the  various  figures 
of  a  striking  situation,  till  they  breathe  and  move  as  quick 
as  Shakespeare,  for  anything  in  the  listener's  immediate 
realization  of  the  scene.  What  is  the  difference  between 
such  a  dramatist  and  Shakespeare?  This  gay  reciter  prac- 
tices an  adroit  selection,  giving  only  sharp  external  contrasts 


1  There  is  something  ghastly  in  the  mode  of  apprehension  and  argumentation  of  this  last 
unnamed  writer.  Shelley  is  quoted  as  saying  that  Homer  is  not  himself  till  the  latter  part 
of  the  Iliad;  hence  the  earliest  parts  are  by  somebody  else.  It  would  be  a  very  natural  ex- 
pression, in  a  mood,  that  Dante  is  not  all  himself  till  the  last  cantos  of  Inferno;  therefore, 
Francesca  and  Farinata  would  be  by  another  hand.  Yet  one  little  point,  a  point  indeed  in 
respect  of  dimension,  I  think  is  successfully  made:  I  do  not  suppose  Achilles,  in  his  coun- 
sel to  Patroclus,  was  thinking  of  Phoenix  and  Meleager;  I  doubt  if  he  even  listened  to  the 
interminable  "yarn"  of  the  evening  before,  in  his  turbid  state  of  mind.  I  think,  however, 
there  is  an  implication  of  the  Embassy,  besides  many  others,  in  XVI  196,  and  context, 
where  all  the  other  Myrmidon  leaders  are  introduced  in  full,  with  outfit  of  antecedents  or 
at  least  genealogy,  Phoenix  alone  being  mentioned  but  by  name;  which  would  hardly  be  if 
he  were  not  already  a  familiar  acquaintance,  and  that  has  been  only  through  the  ninth 
book.  But  there  is  little  need  to  hunt  for  such  mention  in  the  rush  and  crisis  of  the  six- 
teenth book,  where  it  does  not  belong,  when  it  is  so  woven  into  the  proceedings  of  the 
eighteenth  and  nineteenth,  where  it  does. 


8  Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

and  jutting  outcomes;  we  see  what  the  characters  did,  but 
nothing  of  what  they  are,  or  would  do:  especially  in  that 
latter  kind  of  imagery,  the  effect  is  secured  by  very  mutila- 
tion :  the  condition  of  success  and  source  of  the  delicious 
fun  being  that  a  grotesque  fraction  or  caricature  rather  than 
a  whole  existence  is  presented  to  us.  In  a  Shakespeare,  the 
persons  are  integral,  and  the  tragic  or  comic  relations  of 
such  persons  are  eventual;  we  have  an  image  of  a  world, 
deepening  and  involving  like  a  world,  our  enjoyments  in  it 
enduring  and  multiplying  instead  of  evaporating.  All  the 
make-up  and  experience  of  the  character  seems  present  to 
the  writer,  so  that  many  a  passage  of  most  ordinary  expres- 
sion in  itself,  like  Stephano's  "Prythee  do  not  turn  me  about, 
my  stomach  is  not  constant,"  after  his  seafaring,  it  is  felt  to  be 
most  pre-eminently  Shakespearean,  and  impossible  to  others, 
as  embodying  this  realization  of  his  creatures  in  total  instead 
of  at  mere  prominent  points.  It  is  thus  that  small  things 
form  adequate  parts  of  great  things.  Now  of  all  who  have 
written  in  epic  form,  or  perhaps  in  any  form,  except  Shakes- 
peare only,  this  fulness  of  impersonation  is  found  in  none 
other  as  in  Homer.  It  is  this  that  leaves  the  effect  of  other 
lays,  other  tales,  other  battles,  so  shadowy  beside  the  Iliad. 
Not  by  lack  of  spirit;  that  may  abound;  but  spirit  in  default 
of  body  is  shade.  It  is  not  the  Greek  genius  in  comparison 
with  another;  there  were  plenty  of  bright  Greeks,  but  with- 
out this  attribute;  there  were  none  that  had  it  in  such  meas- 
ure, not  even  the  imperial  dramatists. 

It  is  this  which  solves  most  of  the  difficulties  that  have 
torn  the  minds  and  the  texts  of  separatists,  as  far  as  regards 
all  manner  of  human  situations.  What  possible  trouble  is 
to  be  found,  for  instance,  with  the  rjirta  etheij]  of  the  six- 
teenth book,  v.  72-3,  as  compared  with  the  embassy  of  the 
ninth,  if  the  reader  will  but  realize  Achilles?  All  he  means 
is,  "Things  would  have  been  very  different  if  Agamemnon 
had  known  how  to  behave  himself  to  me";  Achilles  was 
mad  with  Agamemnon  then,  and  he  is  mad  now;  and  pre- 
cisely as  Agamemnon's  gifts  and  all  his  works  were  zx®Pa 
then,  he  does  not  find  them  7?7rm    now — they  had  no  power 


Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems  9 

to  take  away  the  reproach  (IX  378-87);  the  expressions 
fit  in  his  moods  as  if  they  had  been  framed  tog-ether.  It 
is  strange,  by  the  way,  if  it  has  not  been  seen  that  the  "now 
will  the  Greeks  come  about  my  knees"  of  the  eleventh 
book,  suits  better  as  it  stands  with  the  retrospect  of  the 
Embassy  than  without  it,  at  least  till  the  eighth  book  be  dis- 
missed along  with  the  ninth;  for  if  after  the  overwhelming 
and  unprecedented  defeat  of  the  eighth  there  had  been  no 
supplication,  it  were  less  likely  in  the  slow  retirement  of  the 
eleventh,  and  the  mere  wounding  of  Machaon,  which  was 
all  Achilles  witnessed.  All  was  now  in  the  way  to  happen, 
however,  exactly  as  he  predicted  would  happen  in  the  ninth, 
or  in  the  first,  for  that  matter,  and  his  words  express  to  the 
very  life  the  exultation  of  fulfilment.  Does  the  different 
shade  of  feeling  and  view  of  facts  when  he  is  talking  to 
Patroclus  in  the  sixteenth  conflict  with  those  of  his  talk  to 
the  representatives  of  Agamemnon  in  the  ninth?  It  must 
be  a  dramatic  imagination  indeed  that  stumbles  here.  A 
lesson  might  have  been  taken  from  the  little  old  Platonic 
dialogue  of  Hippias  the  Less,  where  the  sophist  who  has 
been  so  ready  to  reel  off  the  characters  of  Achilles  and 
Ulysses  like  thread  from  a  drum,  becomes  so  sorely  tangled 
over  these  very  contradictions  and  complexities;  but  not 
Socrates.  So  the  high  and  bounding  spirit  of  the  opening 
eleventh  better  fits  in  sequence  of  the  tenth  than  of  the 
eighth  or  ninth;  the  tenth  indeed  may  be  guessed  to  have 
been  introduced  after  the  main  composition  of  the  poem,  for 
such  a  purpose. 

But  is  it  possible  that  the  Exordium  is  commonly  spared? 
In  the  cause  of  disintegration  and  interpolation,  that  would 
seem  to  be  the  first  fatal  step.  The  "Iliad  of  w7oes,"  which 
it  is  the  burden  of  those  seven  lines  to  draw  out  in  illimitable 
vista;  the  immense  perspective  and  procession  of  disaster, 
all  to  be  fulfilled  in  a  part  of  one  day's  fighting;  a  few  heroes 
flesh-wounded,  and  one,  a  companion  only,  killed.  These 
solemn  lines  would  hold  no  proportion  at  all  with  the  deci- 
mated remnant  of  the  Myvis  ;  the  whole  tide  of  fluctuation, 
the  enlargement  of  the  days  and  hours,  and  the  fulness  of 


io  Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

occurrence  from  the  fourth  book  to  the  eighteenth,  are  re- 
quired to  account  for  them.  The  first  line  should  be  left 
standing,  single;  then  the  sixth  and  seventh  ones  could  be 
somehow  joined  upon  it.  The  other  four,  obviously  inter- 
polated.    The  proem  stands  or  falls  with  the  poem. 

There  are  many  points  of  view  in  which  the  Iliad  can  only 
yield  its  sense  as  a  conscious  whole.  Thus  we  are  informed 
from  the  first,  and  it  is  specifically  reaffirmed  at  the  last, 
that  the  purpose  of  Zeus  is  to  do  special  honor  to  Achilles. 
This  is  accomplished  through  a  period  of  disaster  and  repair 
for  which  the  whole  Iliad  is  required,  not  a  selection.  It  is 
often  insisted  that  this  purpose  disappears,  that  we  tire  of 
the  Trojan  defeats  during  the  absence  of  Achilles.  But 
there  are  no  defeats  at  all  of  the  Trojan  army.  This  has 
been  mostly  unused  to  venture  on  open  battle,  we  are  told, 
against  Achilles.  Now  there  are  two  full  days  of  fighting; 
the  first  drawn,  which  is  therefore  a  relative  success  for  the 
Trojans,  the  second  a  crushing  defeat  of  the  Greeks.  On 
the  third  they  are  going  the  same  way,  and  are  already 
pushed  to  the  edge  of  destruction.  It  is  only  that  the  other 
Greek  heroes  need  their  day.  Naturally,  as  these  books, 
III-N,  are  the  filling  of  a  designed  space  rather  than  the  de- 
signed filling  of  a  space,  there  is  less  regular  progression, 
wider  amplitude,  and  an  enlarging  of  each  hero  as  he  comes 
to  full  life,  in  these.  Homer  can  no  more  be  the  laureate  of 
a  mere  individual  than  Shakespeare.  Perhaps  nothing  has 
more  detracted  from  Homer  in  the  general  estimation  than 
the  notion  that  Achilles  is  his  model  hero.  Achilles  is  often 
and  partially  in  unfavorable  contrast  with  men,  always  and 
wholly  with  the  'God;  and  the  special  moral  of  the  Iliad 
might  seem  to  be  the  lesson  of  his  Satanic  pride  and  self- 
centering,  the  sacrifice  of  public  good  to  private  passion,  as 
clear  a  sin  in  the  eyes  of  Homer  as  of  a  Christian  Saint. 
Herein  is  the  vital  necessity  of  the  ninth  book,  as  one  of  the 
main  foci  of  the  poem,  so  well  pointed  out  by  Mr.  Lang. 
Grote  thinks  that  this  book  upsets  the  fundamental  scheme 
of  the  Iliad,  that  scheme  being  ''a  series  of  disasters  to  the 
Greeks,"  etc.,  which  conception  would  seem  a  fundamental 
error  on  the  part  of  the  eminent  historian.      It  is  not  for- 


Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems  n 

gotten,  it  is  everywhere  enforced,  that  the  God  thinks  not 
as  the  man  thinks;  the  chasm  of  this  interval  is  what  the 
genius  of  Homer  fills.  A  vast  deal  must  go  counter  and 
relationless  to  the  mere  file  of  the  design  on  which  the  will 
of  the  man  and  of  the  deity  are  one.  The  grandeur  of  effect 
in  the  total  Iliad  far  above  all  "grand  style"  in  particular, 
dwells  in  this  divinity  of  grasp;  the  true  mastery,  which 
knows  all  the  motive  and  transcends  it  all.  And  the  end  is 
with  the  beginning;  Aio?  8'  ereXeiero  BovXr).  Achilles  never 
could  have  foreseen,  and  we  can  but  appreciate  the  amazing 
correlation  of  force  by  which  the  "wrath"  can  come  to  no 
end  by  the  death  of  Patroclus  and  the  discharge  of  hostility 
to  Agamemnon,  but  now  blazes  first  into  reactive  impre- 
cation upon  wrath  itself  (XVIII  107-10),  and  then  rushes 
to  a  new  course  in  line  with  the  more  general  will  of  Zeus, 
who  makes  the  wrath  to  praise  him.  A  course  which  works 
to  its  fitted  end  in  the  twenty-fourth  book,  and  can  have 
neither  more  nor  less  than  that  career.  Once  more  it  is  the 
fulness,  not  the  mere  activity,  which  marks  the  great  and 
individual  master. 

Then  the  means  by  which  that  purpose  is  carried  out,  the 
grouping  of  events  and  personages  involved,  bear  telling 
witness  of  unity,  at  least  when  we  lay  down  the  microscope 
for  the  field  glass,  which  would  seem  the  more  proper  im- 
plement for  the  scene  of  Homer.  The  various  Achaian 
heroes,  who  must  have  their  meed  of  glory,  shine  through 
the  earlier  books;  and  are  one  after  another  withdrawn,  leav- 
ing none  ascendant  but  the  inexpugnable  Ajax,  whose  stolid 
fortitude,  powerfully  as  it  comes  to  win  upon  the  reader 
through  the  whole  progress  to  its  culmination  at  the  end  of 
the  seventeenth  book,  is  like  a  foil  to  Achilles,  not  as  the 
splendor  of  Diomede  or  the  wisdom  of  Ulysses.  Yet  even 
he  is  silently  and  judiciously  withheld  in  the  last  battle,  as 
in  sheer  valor  his  rivalry  would  be  too  close.  Here  is  one  of 
the  true  feats  of  the  Iliad,  one  of  the  things  most  in  keeping 
with  profound  and  precious  experience;  where  a  character 
uninteresting  at  first,  endears  itself  at  last,  to  the  depths,  by 
unchangeable  dog-like  fidelity  of  simple  strength.     But  this 


12  Elements  of  lTnity  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

most  vital  effect  is  impossible,  without  the  length  of  the  epic. 
It  is  perfectly  true  that  different  hands  may  address  them- 
selves to  the  development  of  the  same  character,  as  did  the 
dramatists;  but  such  work  is  not  cumulative,  rather  competi- 
tive. There  is  something  like  a  progressive  effect  perhaps 
in  our  feeling  toward  Moses  of  the  Pentateuch,  or  Yudish- 
thira  of  the  Mahabharata,  nearing  the  close  of  those  works 
which  are  doubtless  of  many  hands;  but  this  is  the  result  of 
seeing  these  heroes  through  vast  spaces  of  time  and  history, 
quite  another  thing  than  the  few  days  enlarged  by  miracle 
to  an  ccon,  of  Homer's  Ajax. 

The  whole  treatment  of  Hector  is  in  admirable  keeping, 
as  pointed  out  by  Gladstone  with  clear  discrimination  in  his 
"Slicing"  of  that  champion  (19th  Century,  Vol.  4,  and  else- 
where to  the  same  effect).  All  through  the  career  of  this 
affecting  hero,  we  feel  the  impression  of  a  sovereign  nature, 
but  whom  all  the  fates  are  against;  the  actual  of  him  hope- 
lessly dislocated  from  the  ideal,  and  a  prey  to  infirmities. 

Not  less  so  is  the  general  drift  of  the  god-machinery,  cha- 
otic as  that  element  may  usually  seem.  We  understand  from 
v.  34  that  Zeus  discouraged  the  gods  taking  part  in  the  strug- 
gle, somewhat  as  the  Pope  did  promiscuous  discussions  on 
free-will  or  the  like  in  the  Church,  and  in  the  beginning  of 
VIII  this  comes  out  in  a  rigid  and  stinging  prohibition. 
There  is  much  champing  at  the  bit,  but  on  the  whole  the 
rule  is  in  force,  till  for  a  glory  to  the  reappearing  figure  of 
Achilles  all  bars  are  lowered,  and  "to  't  they  go  like  light- 
ning" in  the  twentieth;  all  this  imperatively  needs  the  poem 
as  a  whole  for  its  working  effect.  That  there  should  be  a 
forlorn  insufficiency  in  this  effect  at  last;  that  the  strife  of  the 
gods  should  degenerate  from  the  sublime  prelude  of  symbol 
at  the  opening  of  the  twentieth  to  the  burlesque  literalism  of 
the  twenty-first,  this  we  may  ascribe  to  weakness  of  human 
nature  itself  rather  than  of  Homer.  The  greatest  are  almost 
as  liable  as  the  smallest  to  fall  short  where  they  would  by 
preconceived  intent  put  forth  their  utmost  strength.  There 
seems  to  be  absolutely  none  but  Dante  in  whom  culmination 
of  topic  is  unfailingly  culmination  of  treatment.     Every  one 


Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems  13 

must  have  noticed  the  strange  discrepancy  between  the  ma- 
jesty which  clothes  the  outward  of  the  gods  as  a  garment — 
the  nod  of  Zeus,  the  stride  of  Neptune,  the  clanking  quiver 
of  Apollo,  the  league-wide  bound  of  the  horses,  the  glooms 
and  glories  that  attend  the  apparitions — and  the  pettiness  of 
motive  within.  The  one  expresses,  in  a  shadow,  his  sense  of 
the  divine;  and  of  such  is  the  true  will  that  presides  over  the 
human  world.  The  very  contrast  o<f  the  other  brings  to 
view  how  far  the  soul  of  Homer  oversoared  the  conceptions 
of  his  time,  which  he  must  embody  in  his  gods.  But  none 
the  less  is  the  intent  of  that  sequence  apparent,  as  a  strand 
throughout  the  fabric. 

The  phase  of  the  total  Iliad  as  it  draws  toward  its  closing 
acts  is  notable.  A  change  comes  over  it  something  like  that 
in  the  later  plays  of  Shakespeare  as  compared  with  the 
earlier.  The  rhythm  seems  insensibly  modified,  not  strik- 
ingly as  in  the  other  case;  there  is  less  tune,  deeper  harmony; 
more  abruptness;  nearer  sense  of  the  subject,  enlargement 
of  its  features,  as  if  words  could  not  quite  cover  it,  and  re- 
tirement of  the  broader  groupings;  the  various  classifications 
of  cities,  sections  and  allies,  so  familiar  in  the  earlier  books, 
give  place  by  degrees  to  mere  Greek  and  Trojans,  then  to 
the  leading  personages  alone,  as  in  the  conduct  of  a  broad- 
laid  novel. 

Those  who  have  been  perplexed  at  the  distinctive  marks 
and  novelties  of  the  twenty-fourth  book  would  seem  to  have 
taken  scant  account  of  the  natural  phase  of  a  great  poet's 
mind  on  approaching  the  conclusion  of  a  great  poem.  There 
comes  a  widening  sense  of  disengagement,  while  clasping 
still  the  closer  what  remains;  new  views  of  the  theme,  in 
larger  relations  and  retrospections,  new  forms  of  expression, 
new  allusions.  This  is  precisely  where  he  would  be  likely 
to  refer  to  the  judgment  of  Paris,  if  he  were  going  to  do  so 
at  all;  in  the  rush  of  the  action,  plunging  from  the  first  "into 
the  midst  of  things,"  there  would  be  no  such  likelihood; 
but  in  the  recession  of  the  subject,  in  the  last  groupings  of 
the  actors  and  the  gods,  that  connection  would  come  up 
from  afar,  and  seem  to  be  wanted  by    the    argument    as    a 


14  Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

whole.  There  would  arise  the  first  rudiment  of  the  poet's 
consciousness;  there  we  might  expect  to  hear  for  the  first 
time  the  sacred  name  of  Aoidos.  As  to  newness  generally 
at  the  close,  it  is  "all  in  the  family/'  What  a  fresh  wing 
does  Milton  spread  at  the  last  paragraph  of  Paradise  Lost; 
with  a  number  of  words  in  a  few  lines — meteorous.  marish, 
adust,  subjected  (in  the  material  sense) — found  nowhere  else 
in  the  poem.  In  the  last  canto  of  the  Divine  Comedy  there 
are  still  more  words  found  only  in  this  of  the  hundred;  there 
are  few  terzas  that  could  be  conceived  as  occurring  any- 
where else,  all  the  journey  and  the  world  surveyed  anew.  If 
there  is  an  Iliad  at  all,  it  can  have  no  other  end.  At  any 
earlier  point  of  the  story  an  end  would  have  left  an  intoler- 
able sense  of  incompleteness;  as  we  have  the  work — of  which 
it  has  been  said,  It  does  not  conclude,  it  ceases — the  very 
impulse  of  the  reader's  mind  requires  no  more;  though  much 
may  have  been  finely  done  at  later  leisure  to  that  purpose, 
from  Lesches  to  Lang.  All  further  fighting  would  be  anti- 
climax, after  Hector's  death;  the  whole  scheme  is  complete; 
the  last  ember  of  the  Wrath  at  rest;  only  the  burning  of 
Troy  remains  an  equal  catastrophe,  no  doubt  a  greater  one, 
but  it  is  of  the  special  and  individual  instinct  of  Homer's 
genius  to  know  that  this  most  imposing  topic,  to  any 
miscellany  of  bards  assuredly  most  attractive,  is  not  his 
proper  field.  That  is  a  field  where  war  may  rage  indeed 
and  destruction  revel,  but  where  the  ''valiant  souls  of  heroes" 
must  be  always  central  figures.  In  the  mighty  outward  ruin 
these  would  be  secondary;  and  though  sonorous  and  spec- 
tacular Vergil  can  make  a  splendid  success  of  it,  this  is  not 
Homer.  "Arms  and  the  man"  for  one;  Man  and  his  arms 
for  the  other.  After  all  it  is  not  for  boys  that  he  writes,  but 
the  full  man.  In  no  one  point  is  the  view  of  his  identity 
more  majestic,  and  the  conviction  of  his  unity  more  over- 
powering. How  else  could  we  have  had  a  work,  disposed 
and  related  to*  the  general  course  of  the  history  as  this;  such 
pregnant  themes  before  and  after,  such  concentration  with 
such  expansion  upon  one  so  strict?  I  had  occasion  to  talk 
of  Homer  to  a  school  of  girls,  and  I  endeavored  as  judicially 


Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems  15 

as  possible  to  present  the  theory  of  plural  authorship,  adduc- 
ing examples  from  other  primitive  collections,  which  made 
a  sort  of  whole,  but  of  which  the  parts  were  probably  by  very 
different  hands.  One  of  the  class  spoke  up  :  "But  are  those 
like  the  Iliad,  where  it  is  all  a  story  of  such  a  little  time,  and 
all  happening  together?"  In  the  profoundest  search  of  criti- 
cism 1  have  found  nothing  that  seemed  to  reach  a  vital  fact 
more  surely  than  the  intuitive  query  of  that  schoolgirl. 
There  was  an  old  speculation  that  you  might  "throw  the 
Iliad  in  type,"  if  you  threw  enough  type  enough  times;  the 
feat  is  actually  accomplished,  in  this  later  speculation,  throw- 
ing a  whole  to  which  all  its  parts  bore  no  relation. 

This  obvious  point  is  indeed  encountered  with  much  in- 
genuity. It  is  denied  as  a  fact  that  the  action,  or  rather 
actions,  of  the  Iliad  did  belong  to  that  restricted  period. 
Mahaffy  calls  it  assuming  an  absurdity  to  prove  an  improba- 
bility. Those  actions  belonged  to  any  date  of  the  war,  and 
were  only  organized  into  the  frame. of  the  Iliad  ages  after- 
ward. But  surely  the  burden  is  on  himself.  There  we  have 
those  episodes,  and  we  never  did  have  them  anywhere  else; 
nobody  was  ever  known  to  suppose  they  belonged  anywhere 
else,  during  all  the  ages  when  the  Iliad  was  studied  most 
universally  and  most  closely.  They  fall  entirely  well,  as  we 
see,  into  the  general  frame,  whenever  the  great  poem  is 
looked  upon  as  more  likely  to  be  the  work  of  a  great  poet 
'than  of  a  minute  critic;  since  the  absence  of  Achilles  was  pre- 
cisely the  time  for  the  other  heroes  to  shine  forth.1  The 
points  of  incongruity  brought  up  in  support  of  the  supposi- 
tion fall  utterly  asunder  before  an  adequate  view  of  the  Iliad, 
such  as  an  adequate  study  of  the  poem  itself  creates. 

Presumptive  evidence  of  this  sort  is  discarded  by  those 
who  maintain,  as  Paley  specially,  that  there  was  neither  Iliad 
nor  Homer  in  our  present  acceptation  until  about  the  time 
of  Pericles  or  later.  Find  what  mentions  we  may  in  earlier 
works,  direct  or  by  citation,  much  will  it  signify,  as  they  are 
all  promptly  resolved  into  impersonality  and  interpolation. 


In  any  case  the  cavil  would  apply  to  but  a    fraction  of  the  poem. 


16  Elements  of  Unity  in  tJie  Homeric  Poems 

The  reasoning  a  good  deal  resembles  that  of  sciolists — 
little  as  such  a  word  can  befit  such  a  scholar — who  contend 
that  Shakespeare  was  almost  unknown  in  the  17th  century: 
the  literary  society  not  being  yet  formed  which  should  make 
a  constant  business  of  referring  to  him.  What  literary  men- 
tions should  we  have,  from  a  period  from  which  we  have 
almost  nothing,  of  Sappho,  of  Archilochus  or  Alcaeus?  But 
in  the  5th  century,  regular  history,  national  retrospect,  lit- 
erary appreciation,  had  fairly  set  in ;  if  the  Bible  of  the  race 
had  only  begun  its  existence  as  such  at  that  time,  we  might 
with  some  fairness  expect  a  clear  notice  of  that  fact.  It  might 
be  well  to  ponder  such  a  treatise  as  that  of  Darwin  on  the 
"Imperfection  of  the  geological  record,"  and  apply  its  prin- 
ciples liberally  to  ancient  literature.  But  the  mentions  that 
we  have  are  sufficiently  conclusive :  Pindar,  whom  Paley 
seems  to  claim  especially  as  a  negative  witness,  far  away  as 
his  genius  naturally  leads  him  from  the  paths  of  predeces- 
sors, yet  in  what  remains  of  him  is  amply  positive  as  to 
Homer.  After  several  other  passages  to  the  same  effect,  it 
is  surely  impossible  to  read  the  glorious  hymn  to  Ajax  and 
Homer,  in  the  7th  Nemaean,  without  feeling  that  Pindar  had 
the  same  Homer  as  we,  and  felt  him  as  we.  And  now  the 
softer  numbers  of  Bacchylides  come  up  to  the  light,  a  broken 
few,  indeed,  but  through  them  runs  a  steady  current  of  evi- 
dence (Xlllth  especially,  of  Kenyon's  edition),  that  he 
looked  up  still  more  devoutly  to  the  great  Epic  luminary, 
and  drew  more  directly  of  its  rays,  though  the  name  does 
not  appear  in  these  fragments  as  it  does  in  Pindar.  He  is 
fond  of  Homer's  phrases,  and  he  treats  Homeric  subjects  a 
little  as  Tennyson  does,  being  indeed  a  poet  of  somewhat 
kindred  genius.  So  long  as  it  was  only  poetry  whose  rem- 
nants have  come  down  to  us,  it  affords  such  mentions  of 
Homer  as  we  now  find  of  Shakespeare  in  that  of  Dryden, 
Pope  or  Burns,  whose  whole  work,  however,  we  possess;  as 
soon  as  we  reach  an  age  of  prose  that  has  been  preserved, 
the  mentions  grow  more  definite,  and  continue  more  and 
more  so  until  the  age  of  editors.  In  fact,  the  perversion  of 
ancient  evidence  on  this  subject  has  been  almost  appalling. 


a  £*  J-  * 

Of  CAUfQg 

Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems  17 

From  the  laboring-  devices  of  recent  critics  to  break  this  evi- 
dence, a  return  to  the  ancient  witnesses  themselves  will  often 
have  the  effect  of  coming-  upon  a  clear  gleam  of  light,  which 
there  has  been  a  deliberate  effort  to  quench. 

For  a  spirit  of  enlightened  criticism,  at  this  recent  stage, 
resolved  to  know  of  Germans  as  well  as  Greeks,  and  neither 
to  idolize  nor  cynicize,  but  to>  hold  the  scales  in  upright- 
ness, Professor  Mahaffy,  though  his  treatment  of  the  subject 
on  the  whole  be  rather  faltering,  may  be  taken  as  a  fair  ex- 
ample. He  has  written  a  History  of  Classical  Greek  Litera- 
ture, which  may  be  the  best  of  its  particular  kind  and  pur- 
pose in  English;  while  for  taste,  we  may  observe  with  pleas- 
ure his  appreciation  of  Bacchylides,  against  divers  Germans, 
when  as  yet  there  were  such  scant  materials  for  the  judg- 
ment. All  the  better  for  such  quality,  he  seems  to  illustrate 
what  happens  to  the  intellect  when  it  gets  upon  the  track, 
though  with  but  one  foot  as  it  were,  of  Homeric  disintegra- 
tion. The  discrepancy  hunted  in  Homer  is  liable  to  be 
found  in  itself.  Far  be  it  from  us  to  deny  all  contradictions 
in  the  Iliad,  or  to  explain  all  away,  or  to  care  much  about 
the  matter;  but  where  they  are  picked  out  and  set  forth  as 
here,  for  a  thing  to  conclude  from,  they  invite  a  little  atten- 
tion. 

He  doubts  if  "any  parallel  could  be  found,  among  great 
writers,  to  the  narrative  from  VII  313,  to  VIII  252,  during 
which  at  least  two  days  and  nights  elapse,  and  a  series  of  in- 
consistent events  are  crowded  together,  while  the  dead  are 
being  buried."  What  this  means  or  refers  to,  let  any  one  dis- 
cern who  can.  "Both  Hermann  and  Lachmann  have  brought 
out  the  details."  Can  we  not  read  the  Iliad  for  ourselves? 
So  doing,  we  will  find  no  inconsistent  events  in  this  place;  a 
crowd  of  events  indeed  on  one  of  the  three  days,  which  would 
be  rather  tight  for  history,  but  is  perfectly  germane  to<  poetry; 
we  can  but  recall  with  a  sigh  the  benevolent  wish  of  a  reviewer 
as  to  our  author,  that  he  had  "studied  the  Greek  authors  a 
little  more  and  the  German  critics  a  little  less."  Of  the  old- 
time  stumble  over  the  Wall,  a  word  later.  Then  lightly  fol- 
lows the  random  fling,  recited  and  reiterated,  that  "the  same 


1 8         •  Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

heroes  are  killed  two  or  three  times  over."  Does  a  historian 
assume  that  such  a  statement  will  never  be  called  to  account? 
It  is  not  a  safe  assumption.  There  is  not  one  identified  person 
in  the  Iliad  killed  more  than  once.  The  same  name  may  recur 
among  the  slain,  which  means  no  more  with  Homer  than  it 
would  with  us.  But  no  one  individualized,  by  patronymic, 
locality,  association,  or  in  any  way,  dies  a  second  time.  One, 
as  noticed  long  of  old,  who  is  killed  in  the  fifth  book,  appears 
as  living  in  the  thirteenth;  which  might  be  a  slip  of  the  author, 
or  a  misplacement  of  the  texts — for  no  one  is  likely  to  con- 
tend that  the  Iliad  was  progressively  composed  from  end  to 
end  exactly  as  we  have  it,  but  much  arrangement  and  disar- 
rangement would  be  likely,  especially  in  a  portion  of  the  poem 
which  otherwise  bears  marks  of  much  confusion,  and  a  book, 
the  only  one  of  the  twenty-four,  which  leaves  us  at  the  end 
with  no  perceptible  advance  on  the  beginning,  in  progress  of 
the  story  or  incident  of  importance.1  ''The  first  view  of  the 
Greek  chiefs  by  Priam,  in  the  tenth  year  of  the  war,"  is  no- 
where stated  to  be  the  first;  but  the  new-modeled  army  fur- 
nishes a  peculiarly  appropriate  occasion  for  the  spectacle, 
as  largely  a  novelty;  of  this  also  a  further  word  in  its  place. 
For  the  misgiving  of  Diomede  as  to  a  god  in  the  form 
of  Glaucus,  whereas  he  had  been  fighting  gods  the  same  day; 
with  utter  oblivion  of  the  express  provisions  under  which  he 
had  done  that  fighting,  see  the  full  and  conclusive  treatment 
in  Lang,  under  Book  V.  "Ajax  never  once  alludes  to  his  suc- 
cess in  the  single  combat,"  possibly  because  he  had  won  no 
success,  to  what  he  was  used,  though  he  certainly  had  the 
advantage;  "but  it  was  the  common  habit  of  Homer's  heroes 
to  boast  of  such  things."  Ah,  for  a  little  nearer  acquaintance ! 
Homer's  characters  are  worth  it,  and  Ajax  is  one  of  the  great- 
est, so  disguised  in  his  plainness.  All  is  merged  in  "common 
habit."     Is  it  noticed  that  Ajax,  throughout  the  Iliad,  who 


1  This  derangement  would  be  the  more  possible,  as  there  happens  to  be  a  prevalence  of 
Menelaus  and  Antilochus  in  both  passages.  In  reality  the  nearest  approach  to  twice  kill- 
ing is  in  the  case  of  Schedius:  killed  in  the  fifteenth  book,  and  in  the  seventeenth;  in  each 
case  "leader  of  the  Phocians"— compare  Catalogue,  II  517.  But  different  fathers  are  given 
and  presumably  the  two  are  kinsmen,  among  whom  the  same  name  is  likely  to  occur.  If 
we  count  the  number  of  names  that  belong  to  both  Greek  and  Trojan,  however,  we  will 
not  trouble  ourselves  by  the  mere  fact  of  recurrence.        « 


Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems  19 

does  more  single-handed  execution  probably  than  any  other, 
never  in  a  single  instance  boasts  of  any? — a  few  words  in 
XIV.,  to  which  he  is  goaded  in  mere  retort,  hardly  making 
an  exception,  and  perhaps,  by  error,  even  these  belonging 
really  to  the  other  Ajax,  whom  they  fit  much  better.  If  he 
boast  at  all,  it  is  only  in  behalf  of  the  Greeks.  No  speech  of 
his  ever  reaches  twenty  lines;  and  his  words  are  apt  to  be  least 
heroic  when  he  is  most  so.  When  the  cloud  of  war  is  bursting 
on  him  in  XVII.,  he  tells  Menelaus  that  now  he  is  not  so 
much  concerned  about  the  carcass  of  Patroclus,  which  is  go^ 
ing  to  the  dogs,  as  about  his  own  head,  lest  it  get  hurt,  "and 
about  thine,"  he  manages  to  add;  but  the  teeth  of  the  croco- 
dile will  yield  their  prey,  before  he  be  forced  from  that  life- 
less charge.  Mahaffy  cannot  away  with  Diomede  ignoring 
the  "much  finer  horses"  of  Rhesus  for  those  of  Aeneas,  in  the 
Games;  yet  the  former,  splendid  and  untried,  were  of  mortal 
stock  so  far  as  appears,  the  others  of  immortal,  and  expressly 
declared  to  surpass  all  under  the  sun  for  swiftness. — The  final 
count,  of  Zeus  forgetting  his  promise  for  Achilles,  as  it  stands 
is  simply  in  wild  contradiction  with  the  facts  of  the  Iliad;  as 
already  shown. 

A  tendency  of  heroic  fable  seems  to  have  been  much  over- 
looked in  treatment  of  the  Iliad :  that  by  which  the  origin  of 
familiar  customs  or  inventions  is  referred  to  some  particular 
occasion  of  the  heroic  time.  There  would  be  less  puzzling 
why  the  wall,  etc.,  should  not  be  built  till  the  tenth  year  of 
the  war,  with  the  apprehension,  that  this  was  expressly  in- 
tended as  the  first  appearance  among  the  Greeks  of  such  for- 
tifications, applied  to  a  camp.1  So  with  all  the  mathemati- 
cal and  literary  institutions  unhomerically  ascribed  to  Pala- 
mecles;  so  with  the  organization  by  tribes,  in  the  second  book, 
which  throws  the  Greek  army  into  a  new  aspect,  and  gives 
occasion  to  that  review  by  Priam  in  the  third,  as  of  a  fresh 
object,  such  as  the  promiscuous  mellays  of  the  nine  years  did 
not  so  well  admit.  Compare  the  new  impression  of  their 
oncoming  thus  arrayed,  on  the  scout  just  before,  II  800,  etc. 


1  IX  552.  has  been  taken  as  evidencing  such  a  wall  in  earlier  days;  but  it  seems  better 
understood  of  the  town  than  the  camp. 


2o  Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

This  tendency  in  itself  has  little  to  do  with  the  unity  ques- 
tion; but  the  way  it  is  worked  in  the  Iliad  has  a  good  deal; 
the  poem  is  nucleated  about  it  in  large  degree,  and  the  desir- 
able national  emphasis  added  to  the  brief  period  of  its  action. 
Indeed,  this  idea  of  the  new-model  seems  to  be  one  of  the 
master  keys  of  the  Iliad,  so  far  as  regards  what  may  be  called 
its  public  aspect;  for  it  has  a  public  or  general  and  a  private 
or  personal  aspect,  as  may  be  distinguished  in  nearly  all  the  g 
full-grown  plays  of  Shakespeare.  These  of  course  in  each 
case  are  bound  together,  by  the  genius  which  constitutes  the 
world-poet.  The  beginnings  of  great  wars  repeat  the  man- 
ners of  previous  wars;  their  progress  brings  on  the  new  man- 
ner and  era,  under  the  high  stimulus  of  the  work.  The  ques- 
tion why  the  new  thing  was  not  done  before,  is  as  relevant 
as  why  the  world  was  not  created  before.  The  Grecian  army, 
floundering  loosely  on  in  old  methods  through  the  nine  years, 
at  last  has  fallen  into  peril  of  disruption  and  chaos  by  the 
quarrel  of  the  chiefs.  This  drives  the  counsellors  to  their 
trumps;  and  the  most  experienced  of  them  bethinks  at  last 
what  an  improvement  would  arise  from  better  organization, 
by  tribal  zeal  and  emulation;  which  is  strangely  overpassed 
by  Lang  as  "an  apparently  idle  counsel."  It  is  developed  in 
few  words;  but  the  heroes  are  to  stand  out  thenceforth  as 
they  had  not  before  (II  365-6),  and  all  the  sequel  hangs 
upon  it.1  Note  the  close  connection  of  this  new  order  with 
Book  I,  in  the  speeches  of  Nestor  and  Agamemnon;  the  fresh 
confidence,  of  now  carrying  everything  with  a  rush;  the  re- 
lentless purpose  of  Zeus  (419-20),  immovably  adhering  to  the 
resolution  he  is  so  often  charged  with  forgetting;  then  the 
glorious  blaze  of  similes,  unequaled  in  the  Iliad  or  in  litera- 
ture, which  Mahaffy  thinks  a  tedious  conglomeration  of  vari- 
ants— where  each  has  its  act,  the  fire  for  the  ardor  of  the 
regenerated  host,  the  birds  for  their  mass  of  sound  and  mo- 
tion, the  insects  for  their  myriad  number,  last  and  crown- 
ingly  the  parted  herds  for  their  new  array.  This  affords  the 
precise  and  peculiar  space  for  the  Catalogue;  which  Bunbury 


1  Note  the  tumultuous  behavior  of  the  army  at  its  first  appearance,  II  95,  etc.,  "almost 
no  better  than  so  many  Trojans";  its  ordered  silence  afterward,  III  8,  IV  429-31- 


Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems  21 

of  the  excellent  ''Ancient  Geography"  concludes  must  be  at 
least  very  ancient,  on  account  of  its  "close  agreement  with 
subsequent  notices  in  the  Iliad,"  and  which  Mahaffy  takes  up 
as  "inconsistent  in  many  details  with  the  subsequent  books," 
most  especially  it  would  appear  in  Ajax  Telamon  being 
"strangely  underrated";  the  Catalogue,  whose  business  cer- 
tainly is  not  in  general  to  distribute  merit,  going  twice  out 
of  the  way  (528-9,  768),  to  bear  most  exalted  tributes  to  this 
hero;  there  was  an  ancient  tradition,  that  the  passage  where 
he  is  introduced  in  his  proper  order,  was  mutilated.  The 
panorama  of  III,  and  the  marshaled  onset  of  IV,  now  in- 
tense in  their  contrast  with  the  unmodeled  Trojans,  carry  on 
the  scheme.  When  after  a  day  of  heavy  surging  to  and  fro, 
parted  at  night  on  unexpectedly  equal  terms  according  to 
the  design  of  Zeus,  the  Greeks  now  finding  what  their  strug- 
gle is  still  to  be,  again  put  forth  their  quickened  faculty,  with 
new  model  of  camp  as  before  of  army;  wall  and  trench,  with 
their  towers  and  pales,  are  then  devised.  Again  the  account 
is  brief,  as  if  these  were  not  exactly  matters  for  minstrelsy; 
but  there  seems  no  reason  to  doubt  of  its  pregnant  relation 
with  the  whole. 

Matter  against  unity  is  found  in  the  quiescence  of  the  whole 
Achilles  interest,  between  the  quarrel  and  the  reappearance. 
In  exactly  this  relation  are  some  of  the  finest  evidences  of 
unity.  The  child  can  feel  how  Achilles  is  enhanced  by  the 
long  withdrawal — long  in  art,  by  the  drawing  out  of  the  few 
days — and  thence  the  rise  above  all  the  other  heroes,  who 
have  been  raised  so  high;  but  a  subtle  touch  is  the  ever-recur- 
ring mention,  on  one  occasion  of  reference  or  another,  now 
by  actors  and  now  by  author,  of  the  absent  hero.  Not  one 
of  the  books  as  we  have  them,  from  the  second  on,  fails  of 
such  a  mention — only  the  little  third,  shortest  of  those  within 
that  period,  not  expressing  his  name,  but  making  him  more 
conspicuous  by  his  absence,  among  the  marshaled  chiefs. 
The  reader  in  his  chair  may  wonder  why  he  is  not  missed  in 
that  review;  but  those  in  immediate  sense  of  a  huge  exciting 
movement,  especially  a  tremendous  approach,  are  otherwise 
affected.     What  is  there,  occupies  them;    what  is  wanting, 


22  Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

may  occur  afterward.  Helen  missing  her  own  brothers  is  an- 
other matter.  Certainly  the  absence  is  not  accidental,  and  it 
would  not  exist  if  the  scene  did  not  belong  in  this  place. 

Was  there  a  great  poet  for  the  Iliad,  or  not?  None  seem 
to  deny  that  the  work  is  great;  and  throughout  it  there  is  a 
particular  manner  of  greatness,  as  individual  as  the  serene 
harmony  of  Sophocles  or  the  ocean-roll  of  Aeschylus.  That 
is,  if  we  may  attempt  to  specify,  the  primary  conception  and 
presentation  of  subject  always  on  the  scale  of  greatness, 
thence  descending  into  particulars,  with  the  atmosphere  of 
greatness  fresh  about  them.  The  wrath  is  first  presented  in 
all  its  pomp  of  consequence,  in  its  relation  to  greatest  things; 
then  follows  the  story  of  it,  through  whose  pettiness  of  chafe 
and  greed  the  beams  of  this  high  interest  shoot,  as  from  a  sky. 
The  battle,  always  mightiest  goal  of  general  human  interest, 
is  adjourned  and  enhanced  to  the  fourth  book,  with  an  art 
which  would  be  miraculous  if  it  were  accidental — especially 
is  the  third  book  a  study  in  connection  of  design — and  when 
at  last  it  bursts,  the  cumulation  of  effect  is  beyond  all  parallel. 
Details  are  caught  up  in  it,  and  follow  as  they  may.  So  with 
each  new  ushering-in;  the  appearance  of  each  fresh  hero  in 
the  struggle,  the  going  forth  of  Patroclus,  the  reappearance  of 
Achilles,  the  final  combat  with  Hector,  his  burial;  each  is  in- 
troduced by  its  largest  bearings,  and  this  effect  is  used  to 
penetrate  and  leaven  a  whole,  of  which  indeed  the  parts  would 
be  often  tedious.  An  art  of  recurrence  to  these  mainsprings 
is  very  noticeable.  , 

What  is  the  origin  of  that  whole?  A  reasonable  conjec- 
ture of  "how  the  Iliad  came  to  exist,"  may  seem  to  arise  of 
itself.  Perhaps  the  leading  thing  that  strikes  the  reader  as  he 
begins  to  arrive  at  Homer  for  himself,  and  leave  behind  the 
terms  in  which  his  second-hand  knowledge  has  been  cast — 
the  "oldest,"  the  "simplest,"  the  "primitive,"  etc.,  as  of  some 
first  attempt  at  poetry — the  chief  discovery  he  makes  on  his 
own  account  is  likely  to  be,  that  Homer  is  a  culmination,  not 
a  beginning.  The  metrical  development,  the  habituation  of 
phrase,  the  cultured  metaphors,  the  whole  organism  of  ex- 
pression, the  thought  when  at  last  the  thought  comes  ade- 


Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems  23 

quately  out,  the  assumption  of  the  hearer's  acquaintance  with 
so  much  that  has  gone  before,  attest  undoubtably  a  body  of 
literature  preceding;  a  gradual  evolution  of  song,  the  con- 
summation of  which  alone  remains  to  us:  a  disjected  mass, 
the  raw  material  of  Homer,  the  character  and  conditions  of 
which  may  very  fairly  answer  to  the  conceptions  of  the  sepa- 
ratists. The  only  question  is,  whether  such  material  reached 
the  shape  of  such  a  whole  through  the  genius  of  a  supreme 
poet  which  would  precisely  fit  the  result,  or  through  fortui- 
tous concourse  and  agglomeration,  ages  long,  among  a  peo- 
ple bright  indeed,  but  not  one  of  them  a  supreme  genius. 
When  this  kind  of  production  has  reached  its  fulness,  one  is 
likely  to  arise  who  embodies  all  its  "form  and  pressure"  in 
himself.  From  the  very  completeness  of  his  faculty,  he  might 
naturally  be  imagined  as  not  finding  his  special  task  at  once; 
but  looking  wistfully  on  success  already  achieved,  "desiring 
this  man's  art,  and  that  man's  scope,"  and  doubting,  like 
Chaucer,  if  he  had  not  come  to  the  autumn  and  aftermath  of 
poesy,  the  main  harvest  being  past.  After  some  such  empty- 
ing season,  all  at  once  perhaps,  in  one  of  those  moments 
which  do  not  belong  to  time  but  eternity,  the  conception 
comes,  of  a  work  which  should  embody  whole  relations;  a  full 
mirror  of  man's  estate,  with  its  interactions  and  progressions, 
in  focal  intensity,  on  an  adequate  scene.  In  that  instant,  the 
Epic  is  born  in  the  world;  as  perhaps  at  another  such,  ideal 
sculpture  was,  in  the  mind  of  Phidias.  Before  that,  no  such 
thing,  except  in  crude  abortion;  after  that,  a  possession  for- 
ever. All  the  distinctiveness  of  the  Iliad  flows  from  such  a 
spring.  All  its  problems  here  find  their  solution :  the  effect  of 
unity  with  the  flaws  of  that  unity,  the  possibility  of  such  differ- 
ent views,  with  the  eternal  freshness  of  the  effect  and  the  prob- 
lem, rise  from  this  condition,  that  we  have  here  the  Epic  in 
its  act  of  nascency — the  not-being  and  the  being  of  it,  both  at 
one  in  that  synthetic  becoming.  The  vision  that  can  see  both 
will  naturally  not  defer  to  that  which  can  see  only  one.  The 
actual  discrepancies,  the  flaws  of  unity  or  consistency,  are  as 
apparent  to  the  unionist  as  the  separatist;  more  important 
matters  are  apparent  to  the  former  which  seem  hidden  from 


24  Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

the  latter.  Analogies  from  later  classics  are  neglected  by 
separatists,  presumably  on  the  ground  that  literary  individu- 
alities are  specialized  and  known  in  these  more  advanced  con- 
ditions;1 but  the  essential  point  of  our  present  view  is  that  we 
come  upon  Literature  first  arriving  at  a  transcendent  indi- 
viduality, with  all  the  conditions,  of  that  peculiar  moment. 
Analogies  extend  both  ways  equally,  and  equal  field  is  offered 
to  all.  We  thus  approach  the  significant  result,  that  Person- 
ality, not  the  absence  of  it,  is  the  more  comprehensive  prin- 
ciple. 

The  monstrosity  would  be,  if  an  order  of  work,  thus  arising 
for  the  first  time  in  the  world,  should  present  the  practiced 
literary  conformity  of  an  Aeneid,  a  Lusiad,  or  a  Paradise  Lost; 
though  heathen  gods  are  tumbled  together  with  Christian  in 
one;  and  Venus  appears  as  evening  and  as  morning  star  the 
same  night  in  the  other,  without  rupture  of  the  poem.  It  is 
reasonably  certain  that  the  Iliad  would  not  be  a  studied  plot 
from  beginning  to  end  beforehand,  as  on  models  already 
existing;  new  parts  would  grow  on  the  main  stem,  as  by  re- 
currence of  the  original  creative  impulse;  these  would  not 
perfectly  evolve  from  the  first  conception,  but  would  coalesce 
with  it.  Assuredly  it  is  not  to  be  presumed  that  such  would 
arise  in  the  order  of  final  arrang-ement;  but  incalculably,  at 
lawless  intervals  of  time,  with  discrepancies  of  style  and  fact 
accordingly;  arranged,  if  ever  completely  arranged  by  the 
author,  somewhat  as  supposed  to  have  been  done  by  the 
anonymous  genius  of  Greek  literature.  The  very  idea  of  the 
Wrath  itself,  when  seen  in  all  its  "moments."  reaching  to  its 
term  in  the  burial  of  Hector,  might  well  be  the  birth  of  the 
Epic;   but  the  act  of  birth  could  not  end  there;    in  the  very 


1  A  spacious  oversight  appears,  in  regard  to  the  fact  just  traced,  that  the  Homeric  poems 
express  a  maturity,  not  an  origin;  whence  they  come  with  exact  propriety  into  such  com- 
parisons. By  this  oversight  we  get  able  archaeology,  the  taste  of  the  age,  but  not  criticism. 
Renan,  in  perhaps  the  last  of  his  works  (Israel,  livre  7,  chap.  9),  has  a  curious  observation 
on  our  theme.  He  gives  thanks  that  the  Hebrews  were  such  poor  compilers,  so  that  pre- 
cious documents  descend  to  us  from  remote  antiquity  unchanged,  and  all  come  forth  to 
view  with  a  little  washing  and  unplastering.  The  Greeks  were  so  full  of  taste  and  ele- 
gance that  their  literary  antiquities  became  speedily  unrecognizable.  Their  Iliad  and 
Odyssey  were  in  like  manner  assemblages  of  earlier  materials;  but,  geniuses  even  in  com- 
pilation, their  work  was  done  so  cleverly  that  the  junctures  hardly  ever  appear.  It  does 
not  occur  to  the  fine-fingering  essayist  that  he  is  giving  a  perfect  description  of  a  great 
master's  work,  of  Shakespeare's,  Vergil's,  Goethe's,  on  his  materials,  and  no  description  at 
all  of  anything  that  was  ever  known  to  be  done  without  one.  The  Renanese  translated 
into  plain,  will  read,  The  wonderful  Greeks  have  made  an  Iliad  and  Odyssey  which  give 
every  indication  of  being  single  works. 


Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems  25 

necessity  of  a  full  action,  to  the  measure  of  the  "myriad  wOes" 
and  the  proportion  of  the  whole,  many  a  story,  episode  and 
reminiscence  must  appear;  and  these  would  not  move  stead- 
ily to  one  end  like  a  Macbeth,  but  would  hang  about  that  cen- 
tral stem  in  delightful  tantalizing  richness,  ever  provoking, 
and  never  satisfying-  curiosity  as  to  the  consciousness  of  con- 
struction on  the  author's  part.  The  "expansions"  of  the  orig- 
inal fable,  such  a  favorite  of  modern  conjecture,  are  probable 
enough,  but  by  far  most  probable  as  expansions  in  the  teem- 
ing brain  of  the  author.  He  might  often  be  perplexed  to  his 
fill  in  adjusting  them.  The  long  congested  hours  of  the 
crisis  day  from  XI  to  XVIII,1  with  the  pouring  torrent  of 
their  matter,  the  rich  increase  of  event  and  character  in  the 
abeyance  period  from  III  to  X,  seem  to  witness  never-ending 
jets  in  this  after-birth  of  inspiration.  These  excrescent  mem- 
bers are  essential  in  the  largest  consideration  of  the  whole, 
incidental  and  free-living  in  themselves,  enchanting  us  with 
their  own  vital  breath,  with  their  want,  not  of  skill,  but  of  the 
ripened  fruits  of  skill.  The  abundance  of  resource  requiring 
prodigality  of  manifestation,  takes  effect  in  a  profusion  of 
utterance,  often  running  toward  garrulity.  All  the  memory 
of  Nestor  is  present  with  him;  how  brief  is  all  the  talk  of 
Nestor,  relatively!  By  the  same  delight  in  life  and  relation 
as  warrior  after  warrior,  though  but  once  appearing,  yet  is 
introduced  to  us  by  his  family  antecedents,  so  every  aspect  of 
the  tale  is  enriched  with  belongings.  Over  and  above  all  that 
can  be  said  of  each  thing  itself,  similes  and  figures  must 
abound,  meeting  every  suggestion  from  it;  favorite  subjects 
of  illustration  constantly  recurring,  yet  with  how  little  mere 
iteration  in  these.  He  would  surely  give  us  a  catalogue  of 
ships  and  heroes,  for  the  sheer  enjoyment  of  it,  whatever  diffi- 
culties we  may  find  with  the  one  we  have.  This  redundance 
of  power  would  no  more  save  the  whole  from  inconsistencies 
than  Shakespeare  from  anachronisms;  it  would  be  rather  the 
condition  of  them.    But  many  of  the  incidental  mentions  that 


1  Note  that  with  all  the  preternatural  lengthening  of  the  day,  its  whole  extent  is  dis- 
posed of  in  a  few  lines,  without  particular  action;  the  forenoon,  XI  84.  etc.,  the  afternoon, 
XVI  777,  etc.  Strong  evidence  of  later  crowding  in— by  the  author  infinitely  rather  than 
by  any  other.     Even  so,  of  all  days,  it  sets  prematurely,  XVIII  239-40. 


26  Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

have  been  most  questioned  seem  particularly  well  to  lit  the 
place  of  Homer.  The  Amazons  of  later  authorities  took  part 
in  the  Trojan  war;  in  Homer  they  are  pushed  further  back, 
known  to  the  ancestry  of  a  hero  or  to  the  youth  of  an  old 
man.  For  so  it  is  with  all  avnaveipai ;  they  belong  not  to 
present  conditions,  but  to  remote,  in  time  or  place  or  stage. 
The  appearance  of  Dionysus  in  the  sixth  book  and  elsewhere, 
scarcely  distinguishable  as  a  god  except  by  statement  of  the 
fact,  and  at  forlorn  disadvantage  in  competition  with  a  mortal, 
rudimentary  in  his  deity  as  the  Vishnu  of  the  Vedas,  bears 
just  such  a  relation  with  the  mighty  inspirer  of  Aeschylus  and 
self-avenger  of  Euripides  as  the  lapse  of  time  and  period  of 
development  would  require. 

Interpolation,  except  of  narrow  special  passages,  or  where 
mere  variation  of  memory  and  supply  of  its  lapse  might  pass 
into  that,  would  much  more  naturally  belong  to  the  antece- 
dents than  the  consequences  of  the  work.  A  good  deal 
already  written  might  be  used,  as  in  the  historical  plays  of 
Shakespeare,  and  divers  faults  of  structure  might  result.  But 
the  whole  being  once  fairly  completed,  not  in  a  day  or  at  one 
point  of  view,  but  with  many  fresh  holds  taken  and  many 
new  throes  of  invention,  the  time  for  material  change  by  the 
author  or  another  would  rapidly  pass  by.  This  may  be  one 
of  the  chief  points  on  which  the  pyramid  of  separatist  criti- 
cism has  been  standing — no  doubt  the  cause  of  its  extraor- 
dinary instability  and  tendency  to  lean  in  every  possible  direc- 
tion— needing  to  be  reversed.  The  alien  portions  of  Homeric 
work  should  be  referred  much  rather  to  preceding  than  to 
subsequent  growth.  "Very  few  passages  of  the  Iliad,"  says 
Grote,  "are  completely  separable";  but  it  might  be  very  pos- 
sible that  some  of  variant  rhythm  or  ruder  structure  were 
earlier  pieces  adopted,  Shakespeare  fashion,  into  the  grand 
whole.  The  Catalogue  might  have  been  warmed  and  nour- 
ished up  from  some  old  set  of  mnemonic  verses;  the  Nekyia 
of  the  24th  Odyssey  might  have  been  based  on  some  older 
legend  of  the  suitors;  while  such  lines  as  106-8,  and  many 
another  passage  of  the  episode,  could  hardly  have  been  from 
any  other  hand  than  that  of  the  Master. 


ELEMENTS  OF  UNITY  IN  THE  HOMERIC  POEMS 
By  Edward  Farquhar,  Ph.D. 

Professor  of  History  in  the  Corcoran  Scientific  School,  Columbian  University 
PART  II 

The  Linguistic  armory  of  the  separatists  is  a  bugbear  which 
should  not  unnerve  the  student,  who  may  readily  con- 
cede to  these  experts  immense  superiority  in  the  niceties  of 
Greek  philology,  but  who  merely  reads  his  Homer  as  he  does 
his  Tennyson,  and  a  good  deal  nearer  than  much  of  his 
Browning.  There  is  simply  no  power  in  man  to  pronounce 
with  authority  that  the  minute  or  considerable  grammatical 
discrepancies  in  the  Iliad  as  we  have  it  prove  differences  of 
time  in  its  fundamental  origin.  Suppose  for  a  moment  that 
such  tests  were  applied  to  the  text  of  Chaucer !  where  at  any 
rate  the  art  of  writing  was  in  vogue  at  the  time  of  composi- 
tion. There  is  no  other  extensive  body  of  literature  dating 
at  or  near  the  Homeric  times,  from  which  we  could  get  the 
parallax  of  linguistic  change.  What  we  do  'know  is  that  we 
have  here  to  do  with  a  language  teeming  with  variety, 
growth  and  flexibility;  with  a  brilliant  people  wnose  capac- 
ities at  that  point  we  cannot  measure;  with  a  type  of  genius 
always  distinguished  for  miraculous  resources  of  vocabulary; 
with  an  era,  when  the  transmission  of  literature  was  beset 
with  conditions  and  liabilities  of  its  own,  of  which  we  have 
now  no  accurate  reckoning.  These  are  matters  sure  to  take 
effect  on  the  grammatical  form  of  the  text,  as  to  some  indefi- 
nite degree  upon  the  text  itself.  It  is  said  in  "Homer  and  the 
Epic,"  that  the  ancients  quote  Homer  about  as  we  have  him; 
substantially  they  do;  but  have  they  not  been  compelled  to 
do  so  by  force  of  editing?  In  the  oration  of  Aeschines 
against  Timarchus,  for  one  example  among  a  number,  we 
are  appalled  to  find,  in  a  peculiarly  striking  passage  of  the 
Iliad  quoted,  not  only  variations  assignable  to  lapse  of  mem- 


4  Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

ory,  but  two  or  three  lines  to  which  we  were  strangers. 
There  is  much  evidence  that  the  text  of  Homer  underwent 
a  good  deal  of  fluctuation  in  its  minutiae,  before  the  final 
fixture.  Points  made  on  such  minutiae  are  for  the  most  part 
as  if  conclusions  should  be  drawn  in  regard  to  Shakespeare 
from  distinctions  of  "then"  or  "than,"  of  "more"  or  "moe," 
of  "sovereigntie"  or  "sovrantee,"  "would  rather  be"  or  ''had 
rather  to  be,"  found  in  a  text;  distinctions  with  which  the 
author  has  really  nothing  to  do  that  we  can  assign  to  him, 
and  which  but  float  on  the  surface  of  a  text.  Nor  can  any 
differences  of  this  sort  between  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  be 
very  conclusive,  especially  as  the  two  would  probably  have 
different  fortunes  for  a  time  in  different  parts  of  Greece. 
But  in  view  of  some  very  authoritative  pronouncements,  it 
may  be  well  to  examine  the  nature  of  this  field  a  little  more 
closely. 

Happy  is  the  man  in  his  own  condition,  though  at  times 
an  occasion  of  sadness  to  his  neighbors,  who  has  got  hold 
of  a  new  Key  to  Knowledge.  The  warmth  of  his  clasp  on 
the  implement  is  apt  to  render  it  entirely  pliable,  and  the 
readiness  with  which  it  will  then  apply  to  almost  any  lock, 
supersedes  all  question  as  to  the  actual  response  of  the  door. 
Such  a  key,  in  certain  hands,  is  Comparative  Philology;  and 
an  example  of  its  use,  at  rather  high  pressure,  on  Homeric 
literature,  may  be  found  in  an  appendix  by  Prof.  Sayce,  on 
Epic  Language,  to  the  work  of  Mahaffy  already  cited.  It 
would  not'  be  easy  to  instance  or  conceive  a  writing,  in 
which  a  more  imperious  mastership  were  assumed,  with  a 
more  spontaneous  downfall  of  its  main  conclusions,  as  to 
anything  concerning  the  subject  "especially"  treated;  or  with 
more  astonishing  misstatement  of  the  facts.  We  are  told 
at  the  outset  that  "In  determining  the  age  and  character  of 
the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  the  most  certain  and  important  evi- 
dence is  the  language  of  the  poems.  Here  conjectures  and 
probabilities  have  to  make  way  for  solid  facts.  If  we  know 
the  age  and  locality  of  a  particular  word  or  grammatical 
form,  we  know  also  the  limit  of  time  to  be  assigned  to  the 
passage  in  which  it  occurs,  as  well  as  the  geographical  hori- 
zon of  the  author."  The  reader,  if  not  dazed  by  erudition  so 
unheard  of  and  unimagined,  naturally  may  inquire,  How  is 


Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems  5 

it  possible  to  know  this  of  words  and  forms  of  such  a  period 
as  the  Homeric?  "Thanks  to  Comparative  Philology'  is 
the  answer,  "and  the  discovery  and  accurate  study  of  numer- 
ous inscriptions  during  the  last  quarter  of  a  century,  the 
history  of  the  Greek  language  and  its  dialects  is  now  fairly 
well  known."  Conceive  the  quick  Hellenic  peoples,  shoot- 
ing forth  at  their  early  period  into  every  variety  of  tribe  and 
city,  of  form  and  dialect,  through  centuries  of  which  we 
have  no  dated  record  whatever,  held  thus  down  to  lines  of 
speech  which  no  power  could  lay  on  that  of  our  own  time. 
For  it  soon  appears,  that  not  one  of  these  inscriptions  can  be 
dated  with  any  certainty  back  of  600  B.C.;  the  Homeric 
poetry  "in  its  present  form  possibly  may  be  a  century  earlier" 
(though  latest  conviction  is  that  "our  present  Homeric  text 
is  not  older  than  the  age  of  Pericles").  For  the  older  ele- 
ment, "we  have  only  the  poems  themselves,"  together  with 
Latin,  Sanskrit,  and  the  like  auxiliaries,  which  tongues  of 
themselves  could  hardly  tell  us  anything  definite  about 
Homer,  but  as  Comparative  Philology — spelt  with  capitals, 
and  becoming  a  sort  of  person — like  an  inspiring  Egeria, 
may  tell  us  whatever  we  need  to  know;  while  Positive 
Greek  is  often  left  in  distress.  "A  form  like  atccov  instead 
of  the  older  apeicwv,  could  not  have  come  into  existence  until 
all  recollection  of  the  digamma  had  disappeared."  How 
easy  it  may  be  at  some  future  time  to  determine,  that  such  a 
form  as  plow  could  not  have  come  into  existence  until  all 
recollection  of  the  old  plough  had  disappeared;  when  we 
shall  have  only  inscriptions  and  a  poem  or  two  for  our  in- 
formation, instead  of  a  confused  illimitable  mass  of  literature 
showing  that  the  two  forms  went  side  by  side  through  so 
many  centuries.  But  not  even  so  can  we  conclude  anything 
about  Homer's  aicwv ;  the  ictus  never  seems  to  fall  on  the 
first  syllable,  that  is,  never  where  any  metric  test  between 
the  two  forms  can  appear,  and  in  some  of  the  most  careful 
editing  only  ae/cow  is  printed.  Passing  lightly  over  such 
potent  "facts"  as  that  for  proof  of  the  relative  antiquity  of 
Iliad  and  Odyssey,  alternative  forms  of  a  certain  aorist  occur 
fifty-eight  times  to  forty-two  in  the  one  and  fifty-four  to  fifty- 
three  in  the  other;  that  eivoaifyvWos  is  found  twice  in  the 
Iliad,  and  once  in  the  Odyssey,  where  the  reader  instantly 


6  Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

recalls  another  occurrence  (XI,  319,)  in  a  most  famous  pas- 
sage, the  earliest  mention  of  piling  Ossa  and  Pelion;  that 
about  ninety  of  a  form  "are  met  with  in  Homer,  as  against 
only  ten  in  Hesiod,"  we  having  more  than  nine  times  as 
much  of  Homer  as  of  Hesiod; — we  arrive  at  length  in  sight 
of  matters  interesting  to  the  question  of  Homeric  unity. 
"We  know  that  the  last  line  of  the  Iliad  is  but  the  protasis  of 
which  the  first  line  of  the  Aethiopis  formed  the  apodosis." 
Such  is  the  force  of  Comparative  Philology,  or  something, 
that  we  can  find  here  little  but  a  deliberate  attempt  to  mis- 
lead the  reader.  What  "we  know"  about  Arctinus  is,  that 
the  ancients  said  he  was  a  disciple  of  Homer,1  that  he  took  up 
the  tale  of  Troy  where  the  Iliad  left  it  off,  and  that  for  a 
Cycle  of  epic  the  last  line  of  the  Iliad  was  altered  to  fit  the 
first  of  the  Aethiopis.  The  impression  studiously  conveyed 
that  all  the  epic  material  was  an  indiscriminate  mass,  from 
which  lengths  were  sawed  off  at  desire,  is  pure  falsification 
of  that  tradition,  whatever  the  tradition  may  be  worth;  but 
it  is  all  we  have. 

At  the  end  is  a  philological  comparison  of  Iliad  and  Odys- 
sey, consisting  for  the  most  part — after  premiss  that  "a 
merely  superficial  reading  will  convince  most  people  that 
the  Odyssey  is  much  more  artificial  and  of  a  more  modern 
age,"  which  indeed  in  the  case  before  us  such  a  reading 
appears  to  have  done — of  a  list  of  words,  importing  different 
usage  in  the  two  poems.  First  it  is  stated  that  the  Iliad 
has  about  130  words,  the  Odyssey  about  120,  not  found  in 
the  other,  an  astonishingly  small  number,  for  the  length  and 
variety  of  the  works.  Then  follows  a  set  of  "abstract  nouns," 
found  only  in  the  Odyssey,  with  implication  that  none  such 
are  in  the  Iliad;  which  can  only  prompt  the  question,  what 
"abstract"  is  supposed  to  mean;  while  by  comparing  Od.  X. 
526  and  XL  34  it  may  be  seen  that  cv^n,  one  of  the  abstrac- 
tions, is  used  synonymously  with  e^^X^  of  both  poems. 
Next  a  series  of  words  with  "different  significations"  in  the 
respective  poems.  These  instances  are  largely  so  many  un- 
truths, where  they  are  not  merely  inept,  being  sometimes 
both;   although  several  of  the  more  glaring  errors  have  dis- 


Not  with  entire  unanimity. 


Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems  7 

appeared  from  the  last  edition.  As  to  what  remains:  Two 
of  them  are  refuted  by  two  successive  lines,  Od.  Ill  136,  7 — 
where  curiously  enough  the  Odyssey  resumes  for  a  moment 
the  scene  of  the  Iliad,  an  indication  certainly,  if  we  sought 
in  such  places,  of  single  authorship — epis  and  /caXeco ;  epi? 
here  is  "strife,"  not  exactly  "battle-strife,"  but  still  less  "riv- 
alry." uAai(f)p(t)v  and  oXoocfrpcov  are  baleful  in  the  Iliad, 
crafty  in  the  Odyssey."  Aatypcov  is  not  "baleful"  in  the 
Iliad,  or  "crafty"  in  the  Odyssey;  it  is  only  an  adjective  of 
distinction  in  both,  applied  nearly  without  distinction,  as  to 
Priam,  and  the  peaceful  herald  Idaeus.  OXoocfrpcov  is  too  sel- 
dom used  for  any  accurate  determination  of  meaning;  a  vital 
element  in  such  determination,  quite  overlooked  throughout 
this  comparison.  The  Odyssey  is  called  "more  democratic" 
for  the  application  of  fiovXyfopos  to  the  agora  instead  of 
the  prince;  which  Odyssean  agora  is  adduced  by  Grote  to 
show  that  the  status  in  the  two  poems  was  precisely  the 
same,  that  is  not  democratic  at  all;  and  fiovXTjcfropos  is  ap- 
plied to  princes  in  the  Odyssey,  XIII.  12.  In  the  Iliad,  we 
are  told,  "/fXe/<?  is  a  collar-bone,  in  the  Odyssey  a  key." 
Here  he  might  have  heard  from  plain  Liddell  &  Scott,  if 
Comparative  Philology  had  deserted  him,  that  /cXet?  occurs 
in  neither  Iliad  nor  Odyssey  at  all,  but  the  Ionic  fcXrjk  does, 
and  that  unless  both  gods  and  men  of  the  Iliad  were  accus- 
tomed to  manipulate  their  doors  with  a  collar-bone,  it  means 
throughout  that  poem  in  common  usage  "key"  (or  bolt,  dis- 
tinction not  clear).  There  are  no  collar-bones  in  the  Odys- 
sey; but  there  are  doors  in  both;  yet  in  the  Odyssey  kXtjis 
most  usually  means  row-bench — once  brooch.  "In  the  Iliad, 
rjr/eficov  is  a  chief,  in  the  Odyssey  a  guide."  By  this  time  we 
may  begin  to  see  why  our  philology  misses  so  hopelessly  the 
meaning  of  Homer's  words;  because  it  misses  the  meaning 
of  words  themselves,  falling  flat  on  their  applications.  This 
one  means,  what  it  says,  "leader,"  in  both  poems,  with  the 
natural  applications  of  that  meaning  in  each.  So  /coa/neco 
means  always  the  same,  and  is  applied  neither  to  "marshal- 
ling" nor  "setting  huntsmen"  always,  as  Iliad  II.  655.  So 
likewise  epcs,  at  its  first  occurrence,  at  the  very  start  of  the 
Iliad,  which  any  one  discussing  the  "language"  of  the  poem 
surely  would  have  by  heart,  does  not  mean  "battle-strife," 


8  Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

but  rather  "rivalry,"  if  quarreling  about  a  woman  be  any 
sign;  and  thus  elsewhere  in  the  Iliad.  But  it  means  "fight" 
in  Od.  XVI,  292,  and  it  has  the  accusative  epiha  in  Od.  VI. 
92,  and  elsewhere.  Of  course  it  means  contest  always,  with 
such  variations  of  use  as  among  ourselves.  That  e^oinaw 
should  be  used  of  space  in  the  fields  of  the  Iliad,  and  of  time 
in  the  periods  of  the  Odyssey,  might  seem  a  happy  kind  of 
propriety;  but  considering  the  number  of  times  it  occurs  in 
either  poem,  and  that  its  congeners  are  used  promiscuously 
of  space  and  time  in  both  poems,  the  fact  is  about  as  import- 
ant as  that  "following"  is  used  only  of  space  in  Midsummer- 
Night's  Dream,  only  of  time  in  Henry  VIII.,  and  only  of  logi- 
cal order  in  Merchant  of  Venice.  If  the  ancient  chorizon- 
tes  dwelt  in  such  distinctions,  as  we  are  told  they  did,  it  is 
likely  that  they  also  were  but  word-catchers,  rather  than 
seers  of  literature.  Some  of  these  collocations  are  indeed  a 
little  too  much  for  us.  We  have  seen  a  triumphant  demon- 
stration of  different  authorship  and  age  between  Iliad  and 
Odyssey,  in  the  one  poem  styling  Crete  hundred-citied  and 
the  other  ninety.  With  but  a  feeble  suggestion  of  a  new 
census,  as  ten  years  might  have  elapsed,  we  had  to  pass  on. 
Such  a  crux  is  Zcoarrjp  of  the  present  list,  which  is  "a  sol- 
dier's belt"  in  the  Iliad,  a  "swineherd's"  belt  in  the  Odyssey. 
Only,  if  Nausicaa  was  a  swineherd — for  Zcoarpa  of  VI.  38  is 
hardly  more  than  a  metrical  variant — the  profession  was 
almost  as  honored  as  war.  At  the  end.  of  the  treatise, 
crown  and  conclusion  of  the  whole,  though  abated  from  the 
still  more  absolute  ultimatum  of  the  first  edition,  the  fullness 
of  revelation  seems  to  come:  Though  a  certain  difference 
might  be  of  little  moment  (which  would  have  been  rather  the 
most  striking  of  all  if  it  had  been  true  as  first  stated,  but  it 
was  not),  yet  "on  the  other  hand,  we  cannot  overlook  the 
significance  of  the  fact  that  the  contracted  form  of  irapa,  irap, 
occurs  before  the  letters  \,?,f,o-  and  r  only  in  the  Iliad,  and 
before  /c  and  p  only  in  the  Odyssey.  We  seem  here  referred 
to  a  difference  of  usage — which  points  further  to  a  difference 
of  personality."  At  last  then  we  reach  a  personality  of 
Homer;  and  it  embodies  itself  in  the  consonants  before  which 
he  contracts  irapa  into  Trap.  "Here  be  truths,"  would  rise  to 
our  lips — but  the  truth  is  not  in  it.     The  fact  is  precisely 


Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems  g 

what  he  has  overlooked.  Experienced  readers  have  ''gotten 
so"  that  whenever  a  statement  is  ushered  in  by  "It  is  an 
axiom,"  "We  cannot  forget,"  and  the  like,  a  misgiving  steals; 
the  expressions  having  so  often  served  but  to  waive  an  inves- 
tigation which  the  statements  would  not  bear.  If  the  writer 
had  not  time  in  this  deep  research  to  make  himself  acquaint- 
ed with  the  text  of  Homer,  he  might  have  learned  of  mere 
Dictionary  that  this  contraction  occurs  most  commonly,  and 
in  both  poems  alike,  before  consonants  which  he  entirely 
ignores,  as  8  and  tt  ;  the  cases  he  mentions  for  the  most  part 
occurring  too  seldom  for  any  possibility  of  significance. 
Could  a  personality  capable  of  contracting  irapa  into  Trap  be- 
fore /^,  extend  the  act  to  v?  We  may  shrink  from  the  spec- 
ulation; but  we  shall  find,  that  the  contraction  takes  place 
(in  spite  of  the  Dictionary),  before  £  repeatedly  in  the  Odys- 
sey, III.  490,  etc.;  before  t,  III.  39;  before  X,  not  mentioned 
by  either  Sayce  or  Dictionary,  in  both  Iliad  and  Odyssey; 
that  the  whole  distinction  is  incompetent,  since  reckoning 
cases  of  composition  with  verbs,  which  there  seems  no  good 
reason  for  excluding,  irapa  is  contracted  into  Trap  before  con- 
sonants quite  generally,  throughout  Homer.  It  was  prudence 
to  observe  at  the  beginning  of  such  a  paper,  that  most  of  the 
facts  adduced  were  those  of  former  scholars.  But  not  all  is 
lost.  A  conjecture  at  least  ingenious  and  plausible,  regard- 
ing an  old  genitive  in  00,  rectifies  a  line  in  the  10th  Odyssey, 
to  say  nothing  of  some  in  the  Iliad,  whose  cruel  metre  had 
racked  at  least  one  humble  student  of  Homer  thirty  years. 
For  this  the  essay  would  seem  worthy  of  existence,  and  Com- 
parative Philology  not  in  vain. 

What  is  the  "solid"  outcome?  That  the  Homeric  poems, 
since  original  production,  have  undergone — exactly  what  we 
would  suppose  they  had  undergone;  a  "variation  of  each 
soil"  by  which  they  have  passed.  Descending  through  so 
many  ages  probably  in  very  large  part  by  oral  means,  they 
would  naturally  bear  the  marks  of  Aeolic  origin,  of  Ionic 
transmission  through  its  progressive  stages,  finally  of  Attic 
recension,  as  to  be  expected  of  their  last  great  depositary 
before  a  final  canon,  and  the  one  from  whose  particular  cus-t 
tody  that  canon  went  forth  Mahaffy  takes  up  the  plea  that 
the  Epic  language  wras  thoroughly  artificial,  such  as  never 


io  Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

could  have  been  in  spoken  use;  that  the  discrepancies  of  dia- 
lect and  form  are  not  of  an  early  comprehensive  type  as 
might  be  supposed,  but  "determined"  in  their  evolution,  and 
mutually  exclusive  as  those  of  Genoa  and  Venice,  or  Cork 
and  Cornwall  Whether  works  of  such  a  factitious  idiom 
could  be  so  passionately  beloved  and  cleaved  to  for  thou- 
sands of  years,  may  be  matter  of  separate  conviction;  but, 
beyond  the  inherent  tendency  of  high  poetry  to  form  a 
speech  in  some  degree  its  own,  there  appears  no  reason  for 
believing  that  this  epic  as  we  have  it  is  of  other  elements 
than  would  naturally  accrue  to  works  composed  by  a  poet 
at  once  accepted  as  the  national  genius,  and  handed  down  by 
memory  for  so  long,  among  such  varying  tongues.  The 
possibility  of  fusion  between  such  dialects  depends,  we 
should  surmise,  quite  essentially  upon  geographical  relations. 
Genoa  and  Venice  do  not  interreach,  neither  Cork  and  Corn- 
wall. But  those  that  do?  The  speech  of  Burns  is  in  every 
shade  of  transition,  from  pure  English,  through  English  with 
a  mere  flavor  of  Scotch,  a  fair  mixture  of  the  two,  a  predom- 
inance the  other  way,  to  the  most  "determined"  Scotch;  and 
is  it  less  the  great  poet  Burns,  and  less  the  speech  of  the 
people?  What  possibility  that  the  lingo  of  Burns  could  ever 
have  been  a  spoken  one?  Aeolia  and  Ionia  doubtless  ran 
into  each  other  like  the  speech  of  the  Lowlands.  Philology 
at  a  distant  age  must  make  work  with  the  Burns-lover  who 
shall  hold  the  first  half  and  the  last  of  the  Cotter's  Saturday 
Night,  still  more  Halloween  and  Mary  in  Heaven,  as  of  the 
same  author.  All  appears  to  be  assertion,  absolutely  dog- 
matic and  absolutely  without  knowledge,  as  to  what  could 
or  could  not  have  been  used  in  the  speech  of  ancient  Greece. 
Throughout  is  the  strange  assumption,  that  irregular  or 
misconnected  forms  would  be  the  artificial  construction  of 
cultured  poets,  in  pursuit  of  archaisms  and  the  like,  rather 
than  the  natural  growth  of  less  cultured  populations.  For 
it  is  notable  that  the  people  of  Greece  have  no  existence  in 
such  tractates  as  these  we  have  been  specially  considering. 
No  one  is  supposed  to  have  anything  to  do  with  language 
except  authors  and  grammarians.  What  poet  will  the  Sayce 
and  Paley  of  the  future  hold  responsible  for  the  "false  analo- 
gies" and  "impossible  forms,"  of  "reliable'  which  we  have 


Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems  n 

accepted  after  a  fight,  and  "electrocution"  which  is  impending 
over  us?  Persons  who  assert  that  Greeks,  through  centuries 
of  speech  and  composition  among  all  their  swarming  dialects, 
having  altered  and  contracted  irXeiwv  into  all  the  various 
forms  we  know,  could  not  have  reduced  the  plural  of  that 
most  familiar  adjective  into  7r\ee?  without  intentional 
archaism,  are  persons  whose  word  cannot  be  taken — in  such 
matters. 

This  problem  as  to  the  date  of  writing  has  been  considered 
quite  vital  to  the  question  of  unity,  applied  to  one  poem 
or  both.  To  me  it  has  never  seemed  material.  The  mark 
once  made,  as  works  like  those  would  have  made  it,  the 
retention  would  be  of  course.  I  have  known  myself  a  man, 
or  rather  boy,  who  had  his  Paradise  Lost  by  heart  from  end 
to  end,  not  substantially  but  literally,  and  now  after  thirty 
or  forty  years  the  experiment  of  reading  him  a  line  at  random 
from  it  would  probably  be  tried  several  times  before  he 
would  fail  of  producing  the  following  one;  the  same  in  the 
same  case  with  several  books  of  Virgil,  and  of  Homer  him- 
self. He  had  no  special  facility  of  committing  to  memory, 
others  easily  surpassed  him  in  that,  but  ten  lines  was  no 
serious  task,  and  the  ten  thousand  were  just  as  easy;  only  so 
much  more  time  and  application;  all  was  a  pure  matter  of 
zeal,  and  the  zeal  held  out.  With  such  a  one  the  difficulty 
is,  not^the  retention,  but  the  making  it  a  difficulty.  If  this 
in  a  world  full  of  books,  what  then  in  a  world  without  them ! 
yet  with  tastes  as  keen,  with  faculties  surely  as  quick,  and 
habits  formed,  vocations  organized,  accordingly?  The  lack 
of  writing  might  be  the  very  condition  for  the  preservation. 
A  curious  materialism  has  seemed  to  infest  the  treatment 
of  this  subject,  the  habit  of  dealing  with  mind  in  terms  of 
matter;  which  may  fit  perfectly  with  any  amount  of  theory, 
but  is  found  to  be  false  in  fact.  One  odd  working  of  this  in- 
capable treatment  is  the  assumption,  that  not  the  preserva- 
tion merely  but  the  composition  of  creative  poetry  must  de- 
pend in  some  great  measure  on  this  accessory;  that  although 
lays  and  lyrics  might  be  composed  without  writing,  long 
epics  could  not.  How  fundamental  human  interests  could 
be  affected  by  the  art  in  question,  does  not  appear.  It  is 
agreed  that  a  lay  might  be  composed  and  recited,  say,  like 


12  Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

a  single  book  of  the  present  Iliad.  Suppose  this  lay  set  forth, 
in  vivid  phrase,  in  ravishing  numbers,  with  dramatic  power 
and  life  unknown  in  the  world  before,  a  quarrel  of  heroic 
chiefs,  expressly  as  the  beginning  of  tremendous  woes;  con- 
ceive the  hearers  lifted  to  a  pitch  of  ecstasy  worthy  of  that 
new  revelation;  would  that  be  the  end  of  the  matter,  until 
bark  and  scraper  came  along  to  petrify  the  tale?  would  either 
poet  or  public  fail  of  unquenchable  demand  for  "continua- 
tion in  our  next?"  If  that  next  described  a  new  array  of 
the  army,  as  for  a  final  stroke;  a  next,  delaying  fondly  the 
assault,  led  forth  in  front  the  first  movers  of  the  whole,  with 
an  art  so  deep  and  fit  that  it  well  might  escape  the  mi- 
croscopic glance,  in  a  single  combat;  next,  the  vast  onset, 
with  wavering  result  at  first,  with  ever  a  reminder  of  the 
greater  that  remained  behind;  and  so  forward,  with  every- 
thing athwart  and  unexpected  in  detail,  with  everything 
moving  steadily  on  as  a  whole,  in  tantalizing  eddies  and  ad- 
vances, to  its  breathless  climax; — where  would  the  obstruc- 
tion come?  While  the  work  went  on,  the  poet  who  did  that 
work  would  be  quite  sufficient  for  its  preservation;  when  its 
full  effect  began  on  others,  they  still  more.  The  greater 
scenes  and  action  would  be  more,  not  less,  of  interest,  than 
the  small;  and  such  interest  may  be  rather  the  sharper,  in  the 
air,  without  the  solid  thickness  of  book  before,  to  clot  it 
down.  When  Wolf  says  "If  Homer  had  no  readers,  I  can- 
not imagine  how  he  could  ever  have  thought  of  composing 
such  long  and  elaborately  connected  lays,"  those  little  words 
"I  cannot  imagine"  tell  a  good  deal  about  Wolf  and  noth- 
ing about  Homer.  Why,  children  with  a  gift  will  tell  each 
other  stories  of  prodigious  length,  resumed  by  the  day  and 
week,  With  continuity  of  plot,  and  all  remembered;  they  do 
not  produce  an  Iliad,  but  they  vanquish  all  the  difficulty  of 
the  Iliad;  for  once  being  Homer,  none  other  need  be  con- 
sidered. Grote,  who  can  find  no  reason  for  referring  Iliad 
and  Odyssey  to  a  different  age,  and  being  of  all  modern  men 
perhaps  the  one  whose  opinion  on  that  subject  is  worth  most, 
yet  concludes  against  single  authorship,  on  the  ground,  it  is 
"improbable  that  the  same  person  should  have  powers  of 
memorial  combination  sufficient  for  composing  two  such 
poems;"  which  seems  a  little  as  if  we  had  seen  a  man  at  a 


Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems  13 

distance  carrying  an  ox,  and  guessed  that  it  was  Milo,  as  no 
one  else  had  been  known  to  do  just  that  feat;  then  seeing 
again  at  a  distance  in  the  same  region  a  man  carrying  an- 
other ox,  should  conclude  on  the  whole  it  was  somebody 
else  never  heard  of,  because  it  was  improbable  that  the  same 
man  should  have  powers  sufficient  for  bearing  two  such 
burdens. 

Differences  in  the  characters  and  persons  of  the  gods,  be- 
tween the  two  poems,  would  be  of  more  weight;  for  thes*e 
at  least  approach  the  expression  of  profound  ideals.  It  is 
well  enough  to  ponder  on  such  a  saying  as  that  "in  the  Iliad 
the  men  are  better  than  the  gods,  in  the  Odyssey  the  gods 
are  better  than  the  men."  Yet  this  at  once  brings  up  the 
figure  of  Apollo,  and  our  distinction  begins  to  waver.  We 
find  ourselves  once  more  in  the  presence  of  transcendent 
genius,  which  surmounts  its  gods  as  it  does  men,  and  has 
always  so  much  left  over.  The  purpose  of  the  Iliad  is  to 
evolve  a  karma  of  sequences  on  human  passions;  that  of 
the  Odyssey,  to  enact  a  piece  of  domestic  justice.  Morally 
they  are  wonderful  complements,  and  are  better  understood 
as  the  product  of  one  mind  than  of  two.  The  gods  in  the  one 
case  relate  themselves  rather  to  passion,  in  the  other  to 
justice.  As  the  full-souled  author,  having  long  dwelt  in 
fields  of  carnage,  is  by  the  reaction  of  his  own  nature  drawn 
to  the  chambers  of  Andromache  and  Helen;  so  if  the  poet 
of  the  Wrath  were  afterward  minded  to  frame  a  poem  of  the 
Return — and  no  one  else  that  we  know  of  in  the  world  could 
be  so  furnished — what  kind  of  a  Return  would  he  make? 
It  would  be  no  place  for  the  hustling  of  the  Ilian  gods;  not 
much  for  any  Olympian  gods  at  all,  except  the  one  of  "wis- 
dom" or  Practical  Resource,  in  that  narrow  field  of  plot 
where  everything  is  to  work  toward  its  right  end  by  the 
valor  of  one  man,  the  constancy  of  one  woman,  the  zeal  of 
one  boy.  Quite  too  much  classification  of  the  pantheons 
has  been  attempted;  the  main  difference  is  that  the  gods 
"run"  the  Iliad  machinery,  the  scope  of  which  is  more 
general,  and  not  so  much  that  of  the  Odyssey,  which  is  more 
individual.  No  historic  BovXrj,  exceeding  the  range  of  a 
man,  is  to  be  there  fulfilled.  The  natural  law  of  a  Homer's 
growth,  like  that  of  his  people,  would  be  toward  less  of  the 


14  Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

god  and  more  of  the  divine.  In  the  Odyssey,  far  other  than 
in  the  warfare  of  the  Iliad,  the  part  of  Pallas  is  to  proceed 
with  as  little  friction  as  possible,  especially  as  regards  her 
half-uncle  Poseidon;  who  is  in  fact  the  only  other  god  en- 
acting any  important  role  in  the  Odyssey  at  all,  and  it  can- 
not be  contended  that  he  appears  there  to  much  higher  ad- 
vantage than  he  does  in  the  Iliad.  Is  any  performance  of 
the  gods  in  the  latter,  meaner  than  his  treatment  of  the 
generous  Phaeacians?  Or  do  their  ethics  shine  in  the  8th 
Odyssey,  the  only  passage  of  that  work  which  holds  us  long 
in  their  general  company?  On  the  whole  their  goodness  is 
that  of  the  baby,  mostly  in  keeping  quiet.  Consider  also 
the  contrast  of  Zeus  himself  in  two  plays  of  Aeschylus — the 
limitary  tyrant  of  Prometheus,  with  the  ''lord  of  eternal  life," 
the  "infinite  mind  that  none  can  traverse,"  the  Supreme 
of  justice  and  goodness,  in  the  Suppliants;  and  find  any  such 
difference  in  Homer. 

Here  may  be  mentioned,  what  had  nearly  been  forgotten, 
the  old  puzzle  about  the  messengers:  "Iris  in  the  Iliad, 
Hermes  in  the  Odyssey."  This  is  a  good  sample  of  the  dif- 
ficulties which  can  be  made  to  loom  out  upon  the  surface, 
and  which  dissolve  of  their  own  accord  in  real  acquaintance. 
If  an  author  of  the  Iliad  as  we  have  it  were  thereupon  to  set 
about  the  Odyssey  as  nearly  as  possible  on  the  same  lines 
of  treatment.  Iris  would  not  appear  as  messenger  in  the  lat- 
ter, but  more  likely  Hermes.  She  is  a  lady  envoy,  only  kept 
for  short  errands  round  the  north  Aegean,  never  to  the  ends 
of  the  earth,  or  for  anything  difficult;  would  not  know  her 
way  to  the  isle  of  Calypso.  But  the  idea  that  her  office  is 
forgotten  in  the  Odyssey,  would  be  a  strange  oversight. 
In  the  1 8th  of  that  poem,  we  are  introduced  to  a  beggar, 
whose  name  is  Arnaeus;  "but  all  the  youngsters  called  him 
Iros,  because  he  did  their  messages."  Whoever  misses  the 
delicious  Greek  drollery  of  naming  thus  the  hulking  vaga- 
bond after  the  ethereal  rainbow  goddess,  has  lost  something. 
On  the  other  hand,  not  only  the  epithets  of  Hermes  in  the 
Iliad  seem  to  imply  such  an  office,  but  it  is  odd,  or  rather  it 
is  very  even,  after  all  the  discussion,  that  Hermes  should 
furnish  just  two  such  effective  instances  in  the  Odyssey — 
for  the  fool's  errand  in  I,  39  is  hardly  worthy  of  mention 


Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems  15 

— and  two  in  the  Iliad;  since  beside  the  memorable  and 
crowning  one  of  the  latter,  in  the  24th  book,  we  hear  of  him 
in  high  character  on  like  purpose  in  V.  388-91,  a  passage 
savoring  of  such  peculiar  antiquity  that  it  makes  the  Iliad 
generally  seem  modern  and  contemporary.  Of  course  the 
simple  fact  is  that  the  office  of  messenger  had  not  then  been 
differentiated,  if  it  ever  was.  At  the  first  instance  of  such  mis- 
sion in  the  Iliad,  it  is  the  task  of  Pallas,  in  the  service  of  Here; 
and  Iris  appears  in  the  same  service,  as  late  as  Euripides  and 
Aristophanes.  It  becomes  very  obvious,  that  in  the  Homeric 
system,  where  something  is  merely  to  be  said,  and  near  at 
hand,  Iris  is  the  usual  messenger;  where  something  is  to  be 
done,  a  more  virile  emissary,  as  Apollo  or  Athene;  and  where 
the  matter  is  one  of  special  conveyance  or  recovery,  involving 
great  distance  or  dexterity,  Hermes.  Capital  examples  of 
this  distribution  are  found  in  the  15th  Iliad,  between  Iris 
and  Apollo,  and  in  the  24th,  between  Iris  and  Hermes. 

Much  stronger  is  the  case  of  the  Hephaestian  consorts: 
Grace  in  the  Iliad,  Aphrodite  in  the  Odyssey;  if  half  the 
rest  of  the  distinctions  had  half  the  presumptive  force  of 
this  one,  chorizontism  would  have  some  ground  to  rest  on.1 
But  the  passage  of  the  Odyssey  which  gives  occasion  to  it, 
the  one  licentious  page  in  Homer,  the  only  example  of  a 
story  introduced  merely  as  a  story,  avowedly  "gag,"  may  if 
any  other  be  considered  an  excrescence,  or  a  later  filling. 
And  here  again,  there  may  be  no  such  clear  marking  of  re- 
lations among  the  gods  as  afterward.  Ever  presses  to  our 
memory  the  emphatic  thesis  of  Herodotus,  that  "Hesiod  and 
Homer  made  the  theogony  of  the  Greeks."  If  this  was  in 
any  degree  the  fact,  then  that  theogony  must  have  been  in 
the  making  in  their  time,  and  thence  capable  of  much 
growth  in  one  lifetime.  For  we  cannot  suppose  Herodotus, 
from  that  context,  to  have  used  these  names  as  mere  im- 
personal symbols  of  the  Epic.  That  they  were  to  some  ex- 
tent so  used  in  the  older  period,  for  masses  of  literature  be- 
yond what  we  now  have,  evidence  no  doubt  has  been 
brought  to  show.  Thanks  for  it  all;  the  case  thus  becomes 
fairly  parallel  to  that  of  the  dozen  scattering  plays  which 


TYet   Aphrodite   is   thought  to  be   but   a   development  of   Charis:    and  for  a  curious 
identification   of   the   two,   compare   Hesiod,   Works   and  Days,  6s   and   73- 


1 6  Elements  of  Unify  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

used  to  hang  about  the  skirts  of  Shakespeare,  from  his  own 
time  onward  for  a  while,  one  or  two  of  them  perhaps  yet 
sticking  to  the  collection.  Proportions  might  naturally  be 
reversed;  the  genuine  a  nucleus  for  the  spurious  in  the  an- 
cient case,  the  spurious  a  mere  haze  about  the  genuine  in 
the  modern,  by  conditions  of  writing  and  printing.  But  lax 
and  extravagant  seem  the  assertions,  that  the  whole  mass 
was  at  any  time  habitually  ascribed  to  the  one  hand  or  one 
name.  The  traditions  of  several  and  personal  authors  seem 
predominant;  and  Mahaffy  himself  tells  us  that  the  Cyclists 
consistently  avoided  Homer's  subjects. 

The  final  arbiter  between  the  two  poems  is  well  appointed 
by  this  writer,  as  the  sense  of  their  different  authorship  and 
perhaps  age;  the  difference  of  "tone."  This  is  the  strong- 
est point  he  makes.  I  acknowledge,  almost  though  hardly 
quite,  such  a  difference  of  tone  in  this  case  as  I  find  between 
Midsummer-Night's  Dream  and  King  Lear,  or  between 
Richard  II.  and  The  Tempest.  It  would  be  still  more  dem- 
onstrable at  a  future  time,  if  only  such  two  works  of  their 
author  should  remain,  that  they  could  not  have  been  of  the 
same  hand  or  the  same  period.  Note  especially  the  argu- 
ment for  later  era  from  the  "fairy  land"  of  the  Odyssey,  as 
in  the  Quarterly,  vol.  125,  and  the  Comparative  method 
which  clinches  it.  A  comparative  method  which  might  be 
far  more  to  the  purpose,  and  less  like  a  new  toy,  may  be 
quite  neglected  there.  It  seems  further  to  be  overlooked, 
that  genius  of  this  higher  sort  is  as  growing  as  it  is  great. 
Talent  of  other  kinds,  as  that  of  a  general,  even  a  supreme 
one  like  Hannibal  or  Napoleon,  may  appear  at  the  outset  in 
all  the  perfection  it  is  ever  to  reach,  but  the  high  poet,  a  far 
more  representative  man,  has  a  cycle  to  traverse  of  which 
the  end  is  unknown  to  the  beginning. 

That  the  social  conditions  depicted  in  the  Odyssey  may 
seem  a  century  or  so  advanced  upon  those  of  the  Iliad,  com- 
ports quite  fairly  with  their  themes,  essentially  of  war  and 
peace;  as  often  heard,  and  as  must  be  repeated  when  made 
necessary.  Let  some  one  far  in  the  future,  working  on  the 
single  Leatherstocking  series  of  Cooper,  compare  the  social 
conditions  of  the  Pathfinder  with  those  of  the  Pioneers,  and 
see  if  they  seem  of  the  same  period.     In  this  as  in  so  many 


Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems  17 

other  matters,  the  deficiency  conies  of  regarding  the  work 
we  have  as  expressing  the  whole  mind  of  the  author,  instead 
of  as  a  temporary  and  accidental  overflow  from  the  great 
deep  of  the  unexpressed.  Having  an  Iliad,  the  "microscop- 
ists"  find  in  it  the  whole  resource  of  its  Homer;  and  so  they 
would  if  the  Iliad  were  ten  lines  long.  But  the  actual  Homer 
would  be  led  by  the  very  production  of  the  Iliad  toward  very 
different  production.  In  such  a  nature,  greater  than  the 
expressed  is  always  the  suppressed,  which  then  seeks  to  find 
its  way. 

It  is  remarkable,  considering  the  vast  differences  of  theme, 
how  identical  is  the  general  state  of  man,  in  these  two  poems. 
Minutiae  only  can  be  forced  apart;  of  all  the  great  steps  in 
his  secular  advancement,  not  one  falls  between  the  Iliad 
and  the  Odyssey.  Whenever  the  achievements  that  consti- 
tute human  progress  are  in  mention,  the  two  have  to  be 
spoken  of  together.  Such  is  the  testimony,  among  many 
others,  of  one  above  others,  who  though  chorizontic,  was  not 
given  to  blundering  or  misstatement;  Grote.  The  attempt 
for  instance  has  been  made,  to  circulate  money  in  the  Odys- 
sey, as  xPV/JLaTa  5  by  which  it  would  speedily  appear,  that 
money  was  eaten  in  those  days  (II.  203),  an  advance  indeed 
on  the  Iliad ;  but  Grote  arrests  this  counterfeiting.  We  learn 
with  wonder,  if  we  can  trust  the  assertion,  that  there  are  not 
many  more  than  100  words  in  either  poem  not  found  in  the 
other. 

For  mere  chorizontism,  perhaps  no  treatise  has  been  more 
referred  to  than  the  article  on  that  subject  in  the  Edinburgh 
Review  in  April,  1871.  But  this  should  not  detain  us;  the 
Review  must  have  worn  sackcloth  for  such  an  indiscretion; 
so  continuous  a  prodigy  of  blunders  and  fabrications  only 
leaves  us  in  doubt,  whether  the  writer  ever  actually  read 
either  poem,  or,  as  to  the  original,  was  capable  of  doing  so. 
The  doctrine  is  modified  to  admiration  in  the  hands  of 
Prof.  Geddes,  who  confesses  a  Homer,  indeed,  as  author  of 
the  Odyssey  and  half  the  Iliad,  but  not  of  the  other  half. 
His  treatise  is  as  learned,  temperate,  acute  and  unconvinc- 
ing, as  ever  fell  from  the  pen  of  man  in  chase  of  a  theory. 
The  difficulty  of  dealing  with  such  a  speculation  is,  that  the 
rational  answer,  sav  as  rendered  by  Prof.  Blackie,  is  so  ob- 


1 8  Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

vious  to  any  real  student  of  Homer,  that  no  effect  of  intelli- 
gence or  ingenuity  appears  in  producing  it,  and  thus  the 
contestant  is  at  a  disadvantage.  Geddes  rejoins  to  Blackie, 
that  a  palmary  argument  has  been  left  unanswered — there 
is  no  glorying  over  the  slain  in  the  Ulyssean  books.  It  is 
true  Pandarus  glories  over  Diomede  in  Ulyssean  V.  283-5, 
when  he  thinks  he  has  killed  him;  but  as  he  has  not  really 
killed  him,  the  rule  is  unbroken.  The  mutual  exclusion  of 
sternness  and  tenderness  as  attributes  of  the  same  poet, 
would  suggest  the  inquiry,  whether  the  writer  had  ever 
heard  the  name  of  Dante.  If  it  is  any  good  to  have  a  good 
laugh  at  the  expense  of  a  good  scholar,  read  the  disparage- 
ments of  the  "Achillean"  Ulysses,  then  turn  to  the  nth  Iliad: 
most  heroic  appearance  of  Ulysses  in  all  that  poem,  where 
there  was  no  occasion  to  mention  him  but  for  pure  wish  to 
glorify  him,  where  he  appears  as  savior  of  the  army,  and  in 
the  subtle  compound  of  fortitude  and  circumspection,  not 
abstract  but  all  human,  very  germ  of  the  Odyssey.  But 
the  contrary  use  of  the  same  parts  of  the  Iliad  by  different 
shades  of  chorizontism,  is  still  more  ludicrous.  Why  a  poet, 
superlatively  distinguished  for  artistic  form  and  symmetry, 
should  take  an  earlier  poem  similarly  distinguished  though  of 
alien  spirit,  and  wedge  it  open  to  thrust  into  it  an  incoherent 
mass  of  discordant  matter,  to  the  ruin  of  its  individuality  and 
proportion,  is  a  "new  Homeric  problem"  indeed.  We  know 
not  what  interpolation  may  do;  but  it  can  hardly  undo  the 
natural  sense  of  man.  All  this  last  contrivance  has  a  curious 
effect,  as  it  were  the  disintegration  of  disintegrationism;  the 
reductio-ad-absurdum  and  suicide  of  all  the  Lay  theory.  Ac- 
cordingly, as  we  hear  from  Mahaffy,  there  is  of  late  a  reac- 
tion toward  unity. 

Aristarchus  wrote  a  treatise,  we  are  told,  which  aimed  to 
prove  the  unity  of  Homer  by  anticipations  in  the  Iliad  of 
the  Odyssey.  If  this  meant  intentional  ones,  the  position 
could  hardly  be  maintained;  a  time  of  birth  will  hardly  be  oc- 
cupied with  the  thought  of  future  births;  but  the  unintentional 
ones  are  most  impressive.  Just  thus  much  of  truth  appears  in 
Geddes :  Whenever  Iliad  relaxes  its  giant  strain,  it  becomes 
Odyssey.  The  instant  Hector  turns  his  back  on  the  battle- 
field in  VI,  a  new  rhythm  falls  on  the  ear;  a  calmer  move- 


Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems  19 

ment  flows;  description,  as  of  structures,  rises,  in  which 
Odyssey  delights.  When  for  one  exquisite  moment  of  peace, 
required  by  the  very  nature  of  man  and  of  art,  to  fall  between 
the  mighty  struggle  of  the  Xl-XVIIIth  books  and  the 
last  battle-day  of  Achilles,  there  is  no  resort  in  the  machinery 
itself  of  the  poem;  it  is  bestowed  like  a  grace  from  heaven, 
in  an  image  on  the  Shield;  again  the  effect  is  Odyssean.  So 
with  the  passages  of  the  24th  and  others — they  are  of  the 
Odyssey,  but  only  less  than  they  are  of  the  Iliad.  The  stern 
old  grammarian,  Mahaffy  says,  crushed  out  the  budding 
chorizontism  of  his  day,  "by  his  authority,"  which  move- 
ment else,  we  infer,  might  have  had  free  course.  Does  a 
person  so  writing  form  any  conception  as  to  the  relation  of 
his  words  with  facts?  When  Herod  exterminates  the  nur- 
sery of  a  town,  all  the  young  lives  with  all  their  chance  of 
usefulness  are  cut  off  from  the  world.  But  the  chorizontic 
innocents;  what  power  over  those,  but  of  truth  and  reason? 
There  was  the  whole  Greek  world,  now  full  of  education, 
criticism,  curiosity,  rivalry;  were  this  Alexandrian  the  most 
terrible  pedant  that  ever  wielded  rod,  even  while  he  lived  we 
cannot  imagine  how  he  could  have  quelled  innovation  by 
authority,  and  not  rather  incited  it  the  more;  far  less  when 
dead.  The  plain  likelihood  is,  that  he  convinced,  and  most 
the  most  intelligent.  By  all  we  learn  of  Aristarchus,  he 
would  seem  a  true  prophet  of  his  mission;  with  a  trenchant 
stroke  and  autocratic  fiat  doubtless,  like  Athanasius  in  his 
doctrine,  Milton  in  his  politics,  Ewald  in  his  history,  and 
from  the  same  root  as  they,  the  depth  and  power  of  spirit, 
master  of  its  field,  and  kindred  with  the  greatest. 

The  poet  who  in  the  full  tide  of  his  war-song,  breathing 
fire  as  if  battle  were  his  only  element,  until  by  the  aid  of  the 
6th  and  other  books  we  look  further  into  his  soul,  yet  could 
make  the  god  of  war  so  abominable  and  that  of  light  so 
noble,  in  that  soul  would  hold  precisely  the  realm  of  ether 
for  the  serener  deities  and  other  forms  of  the  Odyssey.  We 
seem  to  feel  it  in  the  very  change  of  view  from  which  Olym- 
pus itself  is  regarded;  in  the  one,  tempestuous  below,  in  the 
other  Elysian  above.  There  is  just  the  continuation  of  the 
Iliad,  and  just  the  complement  of  it,  which  the  Iliad  itself 
would  give  us  to  expect.     In  the  very  "torrent,  tempest  and 


20  Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

whirlwind''  of  his  conflict,  is  the  temperance  which  controls 
its  movements.  There  is  no  such  race,  as  his;  in  Kant's  figure, 
it  is  no  wild  horse,  but  a  trained  one,  that  he  rides;  or  the 
course  would  not  be  as  it  is.  The  deadly  grapple  over  the 
body  of  the  charioteer  in  XVI,  in  itself  has  witness  of  the 
poise  and  mastery  which  can  turn  themselves  to  such  differ- 
ent work.     Fire  itself  is  of  the  ether,  in  this  empyrean. 

The  mind  in  which  the  Epic  first  arose  as  Iliad,  well  might 
ripen  on  to  the  perfect  form  of  the  Odyssey.  No  doubt  an 
author  who  had  wrought  an  Iliad,  would  not  sink  to  silence 
afterward,  if  life  continued;  such  a  lyre  would  wake  again. 
A  mind  so  Shakespeare-like  would  be  ill  content  with  one 
act  of  expression,  however  full  and  ample.  Doubtless  also, 
phases  of  his  progress  would  appear.  He  must  be  more  con- 
scious of  his  character — though  his  self-suppression  be  abso- 
lutely as  before,  and  though  Grote  declare  that  "the  bard's 
profession  was  originally  separate  and  special."  He  would 
assume  and  notice  that  profession  more  than  in  the  first  epic; 
one  of  his  miracles  is,  that  he  can  thus  advance  in  the  sense 
of  his  own  vocation,  yet  with  the  same  divine  unegotism, 
never  equaled  on  such  a  scale  in  the  world;  well  might  the 
holy  Fenelon  appeal  to  him  as  an  emblem  of  the  viewless 
Deity  in  the  midst  of  his  august  creation.  We  grow  tired  of 
the  potential  and  supposititious  "would";  after  a  certain 
number  of  times  it  begins  to  remind  of  Bimetallism;  but  the 
standard  of  poetry  here  upheld  is  the  single  and  exalted  one; 
we  have  the  works,  and  in  default  of  positive  knowledge 
we  would  offer  the  most  probable  and  cohering  suggestions. 
Every  point  of  difference  in  manner  between  the  poems 
naturally  seems  to  account  for  itself  by  the  probable  evolu- 
tion of  the  poet  from  the  one  to  the  other. 

A  man  shall  ask' perhaps,  "If  we  suppose  the  Odyssey  to 
be  a  century  or  two  later  than  the  Iliad,  certainly  a  lawful 
supposition,  need  we  think  there  would  be  more  evidence  of 
difference  in  age  than  what  we  find?"  On  full  considera- 
tion, Yes.  There  is  no  such  altered  outlook  upon  the  world, 
as  in  the  case  of  Euripides  compared  with  Aeschylus,  of 
Petrarch  as  compared  with  Dante,  of  Milton  with  Shake- 
speare; though  in  each  of  these  cases  the  younger  poet  was 
born  within  the  life  of  the  elder;  and  supreme  poets  have 


Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems  21 

always  appeared  at  a  time  of  vigorous  national  movement. 
There  would  be  marks  of  change,  requiring  no  microscope 
to  see,  no  fancy  to  invent;  which  are  claimed  indeed,  but 
never  established.  And  the  Iliad  already  long  reigning,  the 
Odyssey  artfully  planned  in  reference  and  rivalry,  after  a 
lapse  of  time  when  by  very  hypothesis  poetic  personalities 
were  highly  accentuated,  that  such  a  work  should  leave  no 
track  of  individual  authorship  through  the  short  period  re- 
maining until  clear  literary  memory,  seems  beyond  con- 
ception. We  have  almost  looked  into  the  burning  eyes  of 
Sappho,  felt  the  fiery  touch  of  Archilochus;  from  whom  but 
sparks  remain;  we  are  asked  to  believe,  that  from  about  the 
same  age  an  epic  of  12,000  lines  came  down  unbroken,  the 
delight  of  all  the  ages,  utterly  without  personality  of  its  own. 
In  this  point,  Geddes  indeed  seems  wiser. 

Over  and  above  the  more  apparent  lines  of  unity  in  the 
second  work,  the  more  obvious  coherency  of  narrative,  there 
are  subtler  and  perhaps  more  vital  essences  of  individuality 
in  the  latter  as  in  the  former.  There  are  once  more  phases 
that  require  the  whole  time  and  space,  the  whole  quantity 
of  the  poem  for  their  proportion.  That  the  sacred  fidelity 
of  Penelope  should  at  last  wear  down  to  yielding,  that  after 
such  an  example  to  the  ages  she  should  come  to  offer  her- 
self at  auction  in  the  end,  and  yet  this  without  the  slightest 
derogation  from  ideal  womanhood  and  heroinism — this 
creative  miracle  could  be  accomplished  on  no  narrow  stage, 
The  reader  must  grow  to  feel  the  effect  of  the  years  on  her 
spirit,  and  the  inexorable  urgency  of  the  conditions,  which 
may  be  resisted  with  such  fortitude  for  long,  but  not  forever. 
So  the  growth  of  Telemachus,  from  the  first  bud  of  heredi- 
tary craft  and  enterprise,  figured  in  the  initial  visit  of  Ath- 
ene, to  the  full  "day  of  the  gods,"  when  he  stands  as  rival 
to  his  father  himself  before  their  ancestor — that  development 
and  discipline  is  of  no  less  demand,  in  plot-room.  And  the 
central  form,  Odysseus,  bright  as  are  his  beginnings,  known 
as  he  is  already,  yet  is  not  to  reach  his  fullness  but  in  equal 
compass.  Here  is  a  completion  indeed,  which  may  never  be 
seen  again.  The  Ulysses  of  later  writers  can  bear  no  com- 
parison; that  of  Shakespeare  himself,  a  triumph  of  his  power, 
adds  undoubtedly  something,  but  lacks  much  more.     He  is 


22  Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

craft  made  man,  not  a  man  made  crafty.  He  cannot  weep, 
laugh,  entreat,  fly  out,  pray,  and  still  keep  character,  as  in 
the  one  sole  Homer.  These  large  and  far-rooted  concep- 
tions, latest  for  the  reader  to  arrive  at,  may  be  the  germina- 
ting points  of  the  epic,  with  the  author.  Throughout  Ho- 
mer, their  character  is  one.  So  too  the  relation  of  a  public 
and  a  private  theme,  will  naturally  bear  much  less  develop- 
ment in  the  Odyssey;  but  it  is  there,  and  it  makes  the  happy 
close,  at  the  last  book,  a  vital  necessity  as  it  is  a  crowning 
and  all  harmonizing  beauty.  The  poem  would  be  a  torso 
without  it. 

As  in  the  Iliad,  so  in  the  Odyssey,  the  transitions  from  one 
side  of  Homer  to  another  are  most  exquisite,  and  they  fall  at 
places,  if  that  can  be  said  of  anything,  where  no  probe  of 
separatism  ever  found  a  seam.  In  the  one  poem  we  have 
Battle,  in  the  other  Adventure;  the  two  sovereign  interests 
of  recital  to  the  natural  man.  The  one  does  its  work  on  us 
by  fire,  the  other  by  enchantment;  one  is  nearness,  realism 
in  extremity — the  other,  distance  and  a  world  of  fancy,  high 
human  faculty  running  through  the  whole  and  binding  all 
into  one,  the  utmost  remoteness  with  the  soul  of  Home. 
But  not  with  exclusion;  as  we  found  the  Iliad  extending 
lines  so  wide,  we  may  catch  the  Odyssey  passing  from  the 
one  world  to  the  other,  like  the  growth  of  the  rainbow.  The 
story  of  wonder  begins  at  the  9th  book,  with  mere  continua- 
tion of  the  Trojan  war.  But  in  a  few  moments,  the  hues  of 
fairy-land  are  on  us;  lotos,  giant,  sorceress,  and  underworld. 
There  is  not  a  glint  of  cleavage;  the  geographic  scene  is  in 
perfect  harmony,  literal  and  real  on  the  Aegean,  looming  as 
a  mirage  while  we  leave  it  for  the  south  and  west.  All  this 
is  admirably  worked  out  in  Bunbury — whose  citation  by  Ma- 
haffy  is  extraordinary;  on  exhaustive  and  minute  examina- 
tion of  his  ground,  the  author  of  "Ancient  Geography"  finds 
nothing  to  support  the  chorizontic  theory.  Mahaffy  thinks 
the  poet  of  the  Odyssey  a  "deliberate  romancer"  in  geog- 
raphy, instancing  the  ride  of  Telemachus  from  Pyle  to 
Sparta,  "in  one  day,"  by  the  first  edition,  over  those  horri- 
ble roads.  The  reader  felt  it  strange,  that  the  express  divi- 
sion of  the  journey  into  two  days,  both  going  and  coming, 
3d  book  and   15th,  should  be  so  forgotten;  a  lovable  item 


Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems  23 

of  the  tale,  with  the  stopping-place  prefixed,  and  Diocles 
mine  host,  who  set  good  cheer  before  the  wayfarers,  precious 
germ  of  the  First-class  Hotel.  Now  later,  our  authority  has 
discovered  the  extension  of  time,  and  alters  accordingly,  go- 
ing cheerfully  on  with  the  rest  of  it  unchanged;  no  differ- 
ence at  all  between  one  day  and  two,  in  a  ride  of  fifty  or 
sixty  miles.  The  Historian  of  Greek  Literature  nowhere 
seems  very  fresh  from  his  Homer. 

Our  reasons  then,  for  believing  the  Odyssey  essentially  of 
one  authorship  with  the  Iliad,  fall  perhaps  under  three  gen- 
eral heads : 

The  sense  of  a  superlative  genius,  identical  at  its  highest 
working  in  Iliad  and  Odyssey; 

The  tradition  of  antiquity,  large  and  straight  from  the  be- 
ginning; diligently  sifted,  with  every  effort  to  assign  it 
neither  more  nor  less  than  its  value; 

Careful  examination  of  the  things  advanced  to  the  con- 
trary— their  astonishing  emptiness  and  untruth. 

Very  little  account  has  been  taken  here  in  order,  of  the 
separatist  arguments  at  large;  if  Lang  and  other  masters  of 
the  subject  in  its  largeness  might  not  be  safely  left  to  dispose 
of  them,  they  may  be  left  beforehand  to  dispose  of  each 
other.  Hardly  a  point  advanced  by  one  is  not  demolished 
by  another,  save  only  that  a  Homer  did  not  write  the  Ho- 
meric poems.  In  sum  the  reason  is,  "He  did  not  make  those 
poems  as  I  would  have  made  them;"  and  in  sum  the  answer 
is,  "Content,  we  will  take  them  as  he  made  them."  For  the 
rest,  a  vast  deal  of  later  separatism  seems  to  proceed  from  no 

other  principle  than  that Something  must  be  conceded 

to  the  Germans.  Particularly  does  this  appear  as  a  regula- 
tive influence  with  Mahaffy,  to  whose  work  so  much  atten- 
tion has  been  paid,  as  a  candid  resume  of  preceding  studies, 
and  hence  a  fair  exhibit  of  present  criticism.  Where  there 
has  been  such  a  world  of  smoke,  there  must  surely  be  a  trace 
of  fire.  We  have  seen  where  the  fire  was  likely  to  have  been; 
at  the  rear  of  Homer,  in  the  earlier  state  of  heroic  song;  the 
wind  setting  in  the  past  century  so  strong  from  origins  and 
primal  growths  of  all  sorts,  has  blown  the  smoke  across  and 
involved  the  colossal  figure  of  the  first  world-poet. 


24  Elements  of  Unity  in  the  Homeric  Poems 

The  sense  of  that  character,  the  person  of  Homer,  when  it 
has  grown  to  the  stature  of  its  reality  before  the  mind,  is  a 
possession,  which  should  indeed  extinguish  all  asperity  to- 
ward those  who  have  missed  it.  They  know  not  what  they 
have  lost,  thinking  it  a  dream.  They  might  be  supposed  to 
have  studied  in  Burke  and  Kant,  though  otherwise  showing 
little  evidence  of  such  research,  that  sublime  things  are  pri- 
marily a  pain  to  the  mind,  and  so  that  they  were  best  avoided. 
But  those  to  whom  the  contemplation  is  familiar,  have  a 
source  of  noble  and  perpetual  delight,  which  they  would 
as  gladly  impart  as  maintain.  In  one  regard,  this  individu- 
ality seems  the  most  comprehensive  that  has  appeared  in  the 
world.  It  is  not  even  specialized  into  what  we  call  "intel- 
lect," which  so  shines  upon  us  from  Shakespeare,  Dante, 
Plato  and  the  rest.  But  the  effect  of  intelligence  is  with  it, 
unsurpassed;  the  free  life  of  all  human  character,  the  com- 
prehension of  every  object,  motive,  and  situation.  Through- 
out these  wide  world-poems,  with  all  their  simplicity,  primi- 
tiveness,  and  unsparing  literalness  of  childlike  detail,  it  is  not 
suggested  to  us  that  the  work  would  have  been  better  done, 
or  greater  work,  with  more  mind.  This  trackless  plentitude 
of  power  was  what  the  capable  ancients  felt  when  they  exalted 
Homer  virtually  above  mortality;  and  they  were  not  foolish 
in  their  praise.  Their  deliberate  judgment,  of  a  thing  they 
knew,  is  like  to  stand. 

When  we  consider  the  majestic  fame  of  Homer,  in  its 
breadth  and  height  and  length  together  unequaled  among 
men,  its  three  thousand  years  already  rounding  toward  the 
full,  and  the  lustre  only  brighter,  the  experiments  at  dis- 
solution of  his  fabric  well  may  seem,  as  in  a  distant  future 
they  are  likely  to  seem,  but  a  curious  episode,  a  passing 
breeze,  the  trick  of  a  century.  Perhaps  the  mode  is  already 
past,  in  force  and  life,  while  it  is  supposed  to  be  finally  estab- 
lished; its  actual  effect  on  the  intelligent  world  appears  but 
slight  compared  with  its  pretension.  s  Something  of  value 
will  remain  from  it;  ancient  ways  explored  and  better  un- 
derstood, minute  characteristics  treasured,  multitudinous 
products  of  the  ages  brought  together  in  relation;  and  at  last, 
a  deeper  study  and  a  deeper  spirit  brought  to  the  word  of 
Homer. 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
THIS  BUUJiLSTAMpED  BELOW 

OVERDUE. 


LD  21-100m-8,'34 


vc  002.35 


